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KOALAUS

If you are making genuine Australian products (or just well-made great stuff!) to be marketed at home, in North American or, anyplace else on the planet, why not option the trademarked KOALAUS label?

Sponsors can affiliate their goods and services with the KOALAUS name. It can be aligned with promoting travel, vacations, conferences, clothing, printed materials and direct advertising. This trademark refers to the KOALA, to AUS-tralia and, to US both the country and in grammar, as in: first person subject 'we', object 'us', possessive 'ours'.

And now, for interest, a bit about the Koala that looks like a fuzzy little grey bear but isn't. It looks like a cute cuddly toy but isn't. It has sharp claws to climb to a safe spot in the fork of a tree and a great sense of balance. It sleeps most of the day, dines on eucalyptus leaves after sunset and lives for about 15-20 years. Being a marsupial like the kangaroo and wombat, a koala carries her baby (called a joey) in her belly pouch for about six months then on her back.

The word koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) is believed to refer to an Aboriginal word meaning "no drink" because the koala gets most of its fluid needs from the eucalyptus (or gum) leaves it eats. Hence its breath smells like that camphor, eucalyptus and menthol ointment mom rubbed on your chest when you were a kid. In other words, potent. Koalas have large noses and highly developed senses of smell which they use to locate those favoured eucalyptus leaves.

Koalas have a slow metabolic rate due to their high-fiber, low-nutrient leaf diet. They store little or no fat and have evolved strategies to conserve energy and moisture. Sleeping is one of them. Cool nocturnal dining on eucalyptus leaves is another. The leaves are poisonous to most animals but koalas have special bacterium in their stomachs that breaks down the toxins in the eucalyptus oil from the few species they prefer.

Factoids:

  • There are two sub-species of koala: the northern (adustus) and the southern (victor).
  • Koalas don't normally have to drink water. They usually get enough moisture from leaves.
  • Koalas produce only one offspring at a time, rarely twins.
  • A baby koala is called a "joey."
  • A newborn koala is only the size of a jelly bean.
  • Koalas are mostly active at night (nocturnal).
  • Koalas sleep between 18 and 22 hours a day.
  • Koalas live in complex social groups.
  • Koalas eat 1 to 1.5 pounds of leaves per day.
  • Koalas are often called "koala bears" but they are not bears, they are marsupials
  • Threats to koalas are human-related: habitat destruction, cars and dogs.
  • 1798: first record of a koala seen by an European named John Price.
  • 1803: first detailed account of a koala published in The Sydney Gazette.
  • 1816: French naturalist Henri de Blainville gave the koala its generic name, Phascolarctos, from the Greek words for 'leather pouch' and 'bear'. German naturalist G. A. Goldfuss gave it the specific name cinereus, meaning ash-coloured after the original specimen.