The Weird Mating Habits of The Koala Bear
Koalas live a pretty idyllic life and spend up to 22 hours a day sleeping, so the obvious question becomes how on earth do they reproduce?
Koalas are solitary animals that can be found throughout the eucalypt woodlands of Australia. Each bear sets up home in an area that can range to just a few acres or in some cases hundreds of acres. Koala bears rarely run in to each other and on the odd occasion when two territorial males cross each other’s pass things can get kind of ugly.
“The fights that the males have are pretty ferocious up in the trees. We think that, by and large, the fighting is a really significant biological event for them, and that’s probably why they are not so common.” said Bill Ellis, a koala researcher with the University of Queensland in Australia.
The mating season takes place during the spring and summer and at that time interactions between animals do rise but not by much Mr. Ellis says. During the mating season roughly between midnight and 4 A.M. the male koala makes loud mating calls which are known as bellows.
In the past scientists used to believe that the most dominant male was able to mate with all the females who would seek out the dominant male by seeking out his tell tale bellow. However when Dr. Ellis took a closer look at the paternity of newborn bears in the wild they found out female koalas actually mate with a different male every years and the females use the male bellow to search for a unique mate.
Whilst it is not completely clear, scientists reckon that when a female listen to a bellow she finds attractive she will then seek out the male who made the call in his home range. When the male finds a female in his territory he will try to approach her in a tree.
Researchers still have no idea how a female decides whether she is interested in a specific male or not however if it turns out that she doesn’t want to mate with a particular male she will cry out. Males are much larger than females and they can at times try and force themselves on unwilling females who will respond by either biting, scratching and climbing away or even jumping to another tree.
Ellis adds that females seem to reject males successfully more often than they accept them in the wild. However when female does accept a particular business, no time is wasted and the pair quickly get down to business.
“It’s not a particularly gentle process,” Mr. Ellis said.
The male mounts the female from behind and bites the back of her neck before copulating with her very briefly. Like most other marsupials including kangaroos the male koala has a double headed penis. The female koala has two vagina and a third vagina forms at a later stage for the process of birthing and closes back up after.
