A while ago we touched on some of the weirdest facts about koalas, like how they have three vaginas and a forked penis, and that their fingerprints are almost indistinguishable from us humans. Well to top off all the craziness, baby koalas literally eat their mum’s shit.
And it’s for a good reason.
When baby koalas are first born, they are a tiny jellybean that weigh no more than 0.5g or 0.02 oz. They crawl into their mother’s pouch, latch onto one of her teats and start suckling. Six to seven months later, the joey emerges from their mother’s pouch resembling a koala.
Like all babies, they need to start transitioning from milk to solid food. Or in their case, eucalyptus leaves. So, to do that, the joey will start eating its mum’s shit, also known as pap.
Pap is a specialised type of koala shit. Unlike traditional koala poo that are the shape and size of olives while smelling like eucalyptus (their poo seriously smells like eucalyptus), pap is a jelly-like and dark green in colour. And it has an important role in a baby' koala’s diet.
Pap contains the microbes necessary for the joey to digest eucalyptus leaves. Being tough and fibrous, eucalyptus leaves are super hard to digest. So, the pap provides the microbes necessary to digest these eucalyptus leaves. Since koalas are picky eaters where eucalyptus leaves are their only source of food, it’s crazy important for them to develop their gut bacteria.
What’s even crazier, is that the joey will stimulate their mother’s cloaca by nuzzling and rubbing their mouth around their mother’s anus. The mum will then take her usual shit, before excreting the pap for her joey.
So, these cute and furry creatures just got even weirder. But it sounds about right, especially since they come from the land down under where everything tries to kill you. Or are simply weird as fuck like these koalas.