A new study describes koala drinking behaviour in the wild for the first time, finding that they lick water running down the smooth surface of tree trunks during rainfall – a phenomenon called “stemflow” – and do not rely merely on the water content of the leaves that make up their diet.

The findings, which the researchers said may be useful in koala conservation efforts, were based on 46 observations of koalas in the Australian wild from 2006 to 2019, mostly at You Yangs regional park in the state of Victoria.

“I think the main message is that behavioural observations in the wild are very important to establish what is normal and what is unusual, and to truly understand what animals need. If we watch them carefully, they will tell us,” said the University of Sydney ethologist Valentina Mella, lead author of the research published this week in the journal Ethology.

Koalas, which are not bears despite a common misconception, spend most of their lives high up in eucalyptus trees. They rely on a diet of eucalyptus leaves, normally consuming up to 800gm daily. The word koala is thought to have meant “no drink” in one of the Australian Aboriginal languages. The question of their water consumption had long been puzzling.

“Koalas have been alleged to never drink free water in the wild, or to drink only occasionally. Drinking behaviour has often been considered unusual and attributed to disease or to severe heat stress,” Mella said.

“Koalas were thought to gain the majority of the water that they require from the moisture content in the leaves that they feed on and to drink water unintentionally in the wild by eating wet leaves after rain, or when dew is present on the leaf surface,” Mella added.

Koalas sleep about 20 hours a day to conserve energy because their diet requires a lot of energy to digest. “Koalas are nocturnal animals, so they are only active at night, and they are arboreal, which means that they live in trees and rely on them for food, shelter and, as we just discovered, also for drinking,” Mella said.

“Koalas actually spend 98% of their lives in trees and the only time they are on the ground is when they are trying to find another tree with a more generous food supply or a mate.”

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