this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 187 points 1 month ago (20 children)

Koalas

a small overview about the chlamydia

and it isn't even something they causedit was from invasive species.

One brief overview

with some extra info

The reason koalas eat only eucalyptus isn't stupidity. It's niche evolution. They live in a place with high competition for resources. Having specialized digestive tracts and gut flora allows them to have a food source that isn't under competition. this is a benefit, not a failure. They literally eat something that is poisonous to pretty much every other species. That is an incredible evolutionary adaptation.

Their joeys eating pap is not exclusive to koalas either. It's not only found across the world, the exposure to the gut flora of the parent happens with most mammals, if in a less direct manner. You can even find a ton of information about what happens when human gut flora becomes unbalanced, and it isn't very pretty. It's just worse for koalas.

Not every species is a generalist, and we don't want them to be.

a note on why koalas bellow so much

The source may be a crappy blog, but the information in it matches more detailed data from better sources, and keeps it short enough for this.

As with most behaviors in other species, attributing human judgement and definitions tends to be misleading. While koalas are pretty unique in the lack of mating rituals, they're not doing it for human reasons. Nor are attempts to copulate outside of season as common as the pasta makes it seem. Besides, that's something humans actually do share with them besides the presence of fingerprints. It also isn't so rare in animals as to be remarkable. Copulation behaviors are used outside of mating by plenty of species for social reasons. It isn't in koalas, but since it does increase the chances of mating, it isn't a bad adaptation.

And the extra cerebro-spinal fluid isn't a special ed helmet, it's another adaptation found in other tree dwelling species. Why would an arboreal species having adaptations to mitigate risk from falls be a negative?

Yeah, I get it, the pasta is meant for entertainment, but it also spreads half truths, outright incorrect or outdated information, and skips over facts for the entertainment value. Then people read it and spout it out later as fact.

It's just a crappy copy pasta, not anything meant to be taken as truth, but people are more dumb than koalas.

This pasta in particular isn't the worst (the sunfish one takes the prize for being the most full of bull). Nor is it a bad thing to enjoy as entertainment. But for crying out loud people, don't take random, unsourced copy pasta as an educational tool.

Also This comment covers some things I missed

Then there's this one that is even better

[–] JimmyMcGill@lemmy.world 87 points 1 month ago (15 children)

You know Lemmy is getting good when you have comments like this

Like how the fuck do you know so much about koalas? It’s a rethorical question mostly. Thank you for sharing :)

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 55 points 1 month ago (9 children)

Reddit. Reddit is why I went and looked into koalas.

The three animal copy pastas, sunfish, koalas, and pandas just pissed me off because people started parroting the shit irl. They're all funny enough when everyone knows they're jokes based on bullshit, but people are stupid.

So, I went looking for more information. For the sunfish and pandas, there were already better anti-pastas available that came up after quick searches.

Not for koalas. I did find some later, after I made the initial comment, but when I first wrote up the parts I did, I couldn't find any. I later edited in links to the better counters when I discovered them.

But, for real, once I started hearing people wanting to charter a boat to go and find sunfish to throw rocks at, I started fuming. Same with the people that started opposing conservation efforts to pandas and koalas because of the bullshit in the copy pastas. Treating some text meme like educational material is just too damn much.

So, for years on reddit, I'd throw down the anti-pastas when they came up. Here on lemmy, I thought they had failed to follow people, but the last few months I've started seeing references to them again. I'm glad I didn't delete the files for them.

[–] Sinthesis@lemmy.today 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think I'm an antipastafarian now. What do we worship? Hot dogs? Wikipedia?

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] Sinthesis@lemmy.today 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Ah, that's right. Antipasto is Italian or something for first course.

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

Yup, it's a nice play on words

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