WILD... IN K-ZONE

News Source: K-Zone, page 74 & 75, December 2004
By: Sally Townsend
Web: www.kzone.com.au

Wild … With Sally Townsend from Australia Zoo

G’day my name is Sally and my friend Zack is an orphaned koala joey who is in care at The Koala and Wildlife Hospital. Zack likes to hop on top of my head because this is what he would have done with his mum! To learn more about the Steve Irwin Conservation Foundation and how you can become a Wildlife Warrior, visit www.siwf.org.au or call 1800 334 350. Till next time… Remember, Crocs Rule!

Holy smokes, The Koala and Wildlife Hospital located at Australia Zoo, really does treat all wildlife great and small. Have a go at the increadible story of Door Jam, the green tree frog!

One night, The Koala and Wildlife Hospital received a frantic call from a lady who was very upset. She had accidentally closed her door on a green tree frog and he was in a bad way. “Could The Koala and Wildlife Hospital possible help?” was her question and “Bring him in, mate!” was the reply.

When she arrived at the hospital, the staff quickly checked the frog’s injures and administered pain relief. He had a fractured arm and a fractured leg so Doctor Jon Hanger, our wildlife vet, decided to wait till the swelling had gone down. Then he would operate to repair the leg and place a cast on the broken arm. Two days later, they operated on the green tree frog, most appropriately named “Door Jam”. He was placed under anesthetic, but as Doctor Jon began work on the leg it proved to be trickier than expected. The tiny size of the frog’s leg, in comparison to the size of the equipment available, made the task of placing the pin in the correct position extremely difficult. The surgeons were starting to wonder if they would be able to fix the poor little guy up at all!

Finally, after nearly two hours of surgery, the operation proved successful and Door Jam was on the road to recovery. Part of a spinal needle was used as the pin to hold his leg in place.

Door Jam spent the next three months escaping from his enclosure and returning for care before he was eventually released back to where he came from. Crikey, what a great success for The Koala and Wildlife Hospital! What a ripper!

Koalas are one of Australia’s most recognisable icons, but they’re in a bit of strife! In Queensland, koalas have been declared “vulnerable”. That’s one step under endangered! The good news is that the Steve Irwin Conservation Foundation is trying to help save them.

Bindi loves helping to care for the young orphaned joeys. Here she holds Emily who came to us when she weighed only 65 grams.

Have a go at this… Just think how much you use your thumbs…They really come in handy, don’t they? Well, koalas have one thumb on their back paws and two on each of their front paws. That’s a total of six thumbs! These help the koala to be awesome climbers, which is a very good skill to have when you live in a gum tree!

Koalas sleep 18-22 hours every day! It’s not that they’re lazy, they just don’t get enough energy from their eucalyptus leaf diet.

You would think that sitting up in a tree all day long would give you a sore bottom. We would probably get one but not koalas. They have a ‘plate’ in their bottoms made from bone and cartilage. This also helps them to steady themselves on a branch so they don’t fall out.

Next time you hear someone calling a koala a “koala bear” you can correct them. Koalas are marsupials, not bears. Marsupials have a pouch in which they rear extremely undeveloped young. Bears are more like humans because they give birth to well-developed young.