Koalas reveal their scary side in vicious smackdown caught on video
Koalas might look cute and cuddly but, as this new viral video featuring a pair of them fighting in South Australia has proven, the sound they emit in the throes of battle is far from sweet.
In fact, the high-pitched screaming is quite ungodly.
The two koalas were recently captured on video by a tour guide on Kangaroo Island in the middle of a fierce fight that was reportedly over a tree.
The male and female koala are seen clinging to a trunk, biting and swiping sharp claws at each other before clamouring to the ground to continue their vicious wrestle — all of it at a speed, which like the horrifying noise they make throughout the tussle, they don’t look like they’d actually be capable of.
Kangaroo Island Odysseys, who shared the footage to Facebook, called it a “koala disagreement”.
The wildlife tour group said one of their guides had captured it at the Hanson Bay Wildlife Sanctuary on the island.
“This amazing footage of a male and female Koala having a disagreement was captured by Gaylene,” Kangaroo Island Odysseys explained.
The video was quickly met with an assortment of awe and concern by others, with one woman describing the footage as “distressing”.
The tour group assured those concerned for the female koala, who appeared to fare worse in the fight due to her smaller size, that she wasn’t badly hurt.
In any case, as the video clearly showed, she was victorious in keeping the tree the male had been trying to kick her off of.
The tour group also explained that the fight wasn’t part of a mating ritual, the two koalas were just fighting over the tree.
“The male wanted her tree, nothing to do with mating (which is a few months away yet),” Kangaroo Island Odysseys tour guide Nikki Redman told Yahoo News Australia.
“Apparently he was causing a bit of trouble with many koalas at the sanctuary at the time [he’s a] ... bully boy.”
Male koalas ‘normally a bit rough’
Ms Redman also added that it was not uncommon for male and female koalas to fight with the ferocity seen in the recent footage captured on the island.
“The males normally tend to be a bit rough,” she explained, but also added that “very rarely” they could be seen displaying “tenderness” towards the females.
Unlike the Australian mainland, koalas are an introduced species on Kangaroo Island, and are considered a pest due to the impact they have on the native eucalyptus trees which can’t cope with their numbers.
According to National Geographic, koalas were introduced to the island in 1920 as a precaution against the species going extinct.
The population quickly exploded and as of 2012, there were approximately 27,000 on Kangaroo Island, prompting measures to be introduced to control them breeding.
In more recent years, researchers have estimated the number is closer to 50,000.
According to a 2017 report by the ABC, the big contributing factor to Kangaroo Island’s huge koala numbers is the island, unlike the mainland, being completely free from chlamydia.
At the time, Adelaide researchers found that 47 percent of mainland koalas tested positive for the disease, while not a single koala on Kangaroo Island had it.
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