Offspring: female koalas give birth to a single offspring every two years. A mature male koala usually has a small harem of females which he guards jealously.

Anatomy: unlike bears or seals, koalas do not rely on a layer of fat below the skin as a form of insulation. Blood flow to extremities in cold weather, as in humans, can be reduced, resulting in the conservation of heat. Shivering has also been observed in cold climes as a means of creating heat through rapid contractions of certain muscles. This seems to occur when outdoor temperatures drop below 10 degrees Centigrade. When temperatures exceed 25-30 degrees Centigrade, koalas use evaporative cooling in their airways to regulate body temperature by increasing respiration rates. They can simultaneously reduce water loss by decreasing the amount of water in their urine.

The sequence of koalas in the fossil record:

15 million years ago: Perikoala palankarinnica
10 million years ago: Litokoala kutjamarpensis
5 million years ago: Koobor notabilis & Koobor jimbarratti
0 million years ago: Phascolarctos cinereus & stirtoni

1798, January 26: the 1st record of a koala being seen by an European, named John Price.

1803, August 21: the first detailed account of a koala was published in Sydney Gazette.

1816: the French naturalist de Blainwill gave the koala its scientific name, Phascolarctos, from the Greek words for 'leather pouch' and 'bear'. Later, the German naturalist Goldfuss gave it the specific name cinereus, meaning 'ash-coloured', after the color of the original specimen.

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The eIn their history of the koala, Tom Iredale and Gilbert Whitley (1934) suggest that the common name "koala" was derived from an Aboriginal dialect of eastern New South Wales. Ronald Strahan (1978) lists cullewine, koolewong, colo, colah, koolah, kaola and koala as published dialectal variations of the name in that region, "complicated by problems of transliteration and printers" errors.

The early settlers referred to koalas as sloths, monkeys, bears, and even monkey bears, adopting the unfortunate practice of transposing the names of animals which were already familiar to Europeans to Australian lookalikes. The virtual absence of a tail, together with their stocky build and their relatively long legs, gives the koalas a bear-like appearance, and undoubtedly led to their being referred to as, "koala bears", or, "native bears".