Word To Use Today: koala.

Every day is improved by a glimpse of a koala:


photo of a female koala by Quartl

The koala's scientific name, Phascolarctos cinereus makes it look as if koalas come from the Arctic (and the koala in that photograph certainly has the scarf and ear muffs for it), but in fact the Arctic regions are named after the polar bear (arktos means bear), so the arctos in the koala's scientific name is to do with bears, not the North Pole.

Mind you, a koala isn't bear, either. Still, never mind: phaskolos means pouch, and cinereus means ash-coloured, so at least that's right.

Anyway, there's no two ways about it, koalas are cute. Even a picture of a royally fed-up koala is cheering:


Photo by DAVID ILIFF.  License: CC BY-SA0 3

Koalas eat leaves, mostly eucalyptus leaves, which sometimes take two hundred hours, or more than eight days, to digest. There's not a lot of energy (though quite a lot of water) to be got from eucalyptus leaves, and this is why the koala sleeps as much as twenty hours a day.

They have just about the smallest brains, compared to body size, of any mammal, their brains being less than twenty grams in weight (that's about two thirds of an ounce). On the other hand the fur on a koala's back is the best insulating fur of any creature in the world. 

A similar correlation between fur coats and small brain size has also been observed in humans: coincidence, or what?

Anyway, brains aren't everything: people travel all round the world to Eastern Australia to see them in the wild; koalas have a unique vocal organ in their chests which allows them to bellow very deeply to attract mates; and a koala's pouch has an elasticated top so the baby koala, the joey, can't fall out. 

Who needs big brains when you can do all that?

Word To Use Today: koala. This word comes from the Dharug word gula, meaning  no water. (A koala doesn't drink much, or very often.) In English, the word was originally coola, or koolah, and the change to oa in the middle of the word was probably a mistake.

It's rather a pity: otherwise we'd have a no-water coola.

Sorry...