Koala Territory at RZSS Edinburgh Zoo

Hello and welcome to Koala Territory at RZSS Edinburgh Zoo. This is where we house the UK's only koalas. As you go through the exhibit you will notice that all our koalas are housed separately. In the wild koalas are solitary animals and they prefer to have their own territorial areas. Therefore they would have four or five trees in which they would stay up in the top branches of the eucalyptus and they would go from one tree to the next. When you look at the enclosures you will see that they all have four or five different branches all interconnecting. This mimics how their habitat is in the wild. The first koala you will come to is the Linga. She is our only female and she has a larger enclosure because we are part of the European breeding programme and that allows the space in her enclosure to be able to breed. She is a very feisty female as females are in the wild and a lot of the time when you look into her enclosure you will find her at the top of her favourite fig tree. Behind me here is Jabra. He's nine and a half years old. Adult male koala. Adult male koalas generally in the wild are very aggressive animals but not our Jabra here. His personality is very docile. Further just behind Jabra you've got Gunuru. Gunuru is very much larger than Jabra although he's only six months older. Again an adult male koala and he shows the true signs of the koalas that you would find in the wild which is very aggressive. Next enclosure from Jabra we have our first ever joey born in the UK. This is Yorana. Yorana was born in May 2012 although at the time we didn't actually know it. It was a case of having our fingers crossed but we did see signs in his mum Linga to show that she was pregnant. We saw slights of movements in her pouch and changes in her posture and when Yorana first poked his head out in October we were very excited. First of all we'd have a sort of a foot out or a hand out and eventually he'd sit with his head out quite a lot and then eventually he came out completely and then a year ago he's now gone into his own enclosure and he has shown signs of being very much an adult koala now. Very feisty, very much like his dad Gunuru. In order to monitor our koalas we don't necessarily have to be in the enclosures which is good for them because it means that they keep their quiet and serene environment. Therefore we have to use our koala cam which is monitored day and night particularly in a Linga's enclosure with her coming up to the breeding season we like to watch what she's doing 24 hours a day. In the wild you'll find koalas living in forests of eucalyptus. Now eucalyptus is a very difficult plant to eat, it contains a lot of toxins and the koalas have amazingly developed this fantastic digestive system which enables them to be able to eat only eucalyptus. Here at Edinburgh Zoo we supply five different types of eucalyptus for the koalas every single day and we have to make sure that we know our species of eucalyptus because some of them are more toxic than others. In order for them to extract the energy that they need from the eucalyptus koalas sleep from 18 to 21 hours a day to let this amazing digestive system work very very hard. In Australia the wild koalas face a number of threats. Their biggest threat is unfortunately the forest fires that you may have heard about on the news. Eucalyptus is very flammable so unfortunately a lot of their habitat is becoming smaller and although the koalas themselves are protected the eucalyptus forests aren't. When you visit Edinburgh Zoo and support the RZSS you are helping to contribute to a number of conservation programs which we support. In the case of the koalas it's a species support program and this is run by San Diego Zoo. For more information on the species support program and our koalas here at RZSS Edinburgh Zoo please visit our website.