The koala
Appearance: The koala with thick hair looks cute but it has very sharp teeth and claws (爪子). The male koala is larger than the female one.
Size: 70-90cm Weight: 5-14kg
Food: The koala eats eucalyptus leaves (桉树叶). Each koala eats about 500 grams of leaves per day.
Habit: The koala sleeps for up to 16-18 hours. It prefers to move around in the evening.
Baby fact: A healthy female koala can have one child each year. A baby koala is very small when it is born—only a quarter of an inch. It has no hair and it can't see either. It lives in its mother's pouch (育儿袋) for half a year. During this time, it only drinks its mother's milk.
Danger: The number of koalas in Australia is getting smaller every year, mainly because of people. People cut down a lot of trees, so many koalas have no places to live in and they don't have enough leaves to eat. There are fewer than 100,000 koalas in the world. Some scientists say if people don't protect them, we won't have any koalas within 30 years.
