Koalas are the cutest animals you can ever see in the wild. With fluffy fur, pudgy bodies, round eyes, and wisps of spiky hair sprouting from behind their ears, koalas look like teddy bears with attitude.

People tend to think of the koala as a cute animal that sits around, chews leaves, spends most of its time asleep, and generally does not do very much, but when you start to study the koala, you realize it is quite a complex animal.

Only recently have researchers begun to piece together details of how koalas actually live. A  koala habitat disappears because of global warming, this research may protect the animals from an uncertain future.

Like kangaroos, koalas belong to a group of mammals called marsupials. Female marsupials have pouches in which they carry their babies.

When a koala is born, it is about the size of a jellybean. It is blind, deaf, and hairless, yet it still manages to crawl into its mother's pouch. There, it drinks milk and grows for about 7 months before emerging for the first time.

A young koala starts eating leaves soon after leaving the pouch, but it also continues to drink its mother's milk until it is about a year old. When a koala gets too big to fit into the pouch, its mother carries it on her back. This handy form of transportation continues until the youngster is fully grown.

Koalas live throughout Australia in a variety of environments, from hot and dry to cool and wet. They eat the leaves of eucalyptus trees. In fact, eucalyptus leaves are the only thing adult koalas eat. As long as they have access to certain species of these trees, koalas will thrive. Without them, koalas will die.

Hadir Moftah