Zoo’s just a snooze for cuddly newbie
It’s a good thing the new koala at the San Francisco Zoo is so cute, because koalas can use all the breaks they can get these days. Cute is what koalas do best, besides doing nothing.
The new one in San Francisco, a 2yearold male newly arrived from the Los Angeles Zoo, spends most of his days dozing in a eucalyptus tree inside his enclosure and counting his good fortune in being neither in his ancestral homeland of Australia, which is being ravaged by wildfires, nor in Los Angeles.
Many Australian koalas are fleeing for their lives. Physical exertion, however, seemed the last thing on the mind of the new San Francisco koala.
He and his exhibit mate spent Friday napping — in the way of most koalas — while dozens of zoo visitors stared at them and said they wished they could pet them — in the way of most humans.
In Los Angeles, the donothing male koala was known as Flin. In San Francisco he is, so far, nameless. That’s to allow the San Francisco Zoo its traditional fundraising perk of allowing donors to name new arrivals. The zoo is conducting a namethekoala contest, the winning name to be se
lected next month from among those submitted online by donors.
Times are dire in Australia, where an estimated 1 billion animals have been lost to the wildfires. They’re so dire that the zoo is sending all the namethekoala donations to Australia wildfire relief funds instead of keeping the money for itself, which is what it usually does with donations.
And nobody was saying it in so many words, but the wildfires may actually work out to the new male koala’s advantage.
At first, the new arrival was not considered a suitable genetic partner for its fellow San Francisco koala, a 9yearold female named Cynthia. That’s because koala matchmakers with the Species Survival Plan of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums said the two animals’ genes were already sufficiently represented in the koala gene pool. And that meant the two would be prohibited from making amorous advances or — koalas being koalas — ever being left alone together.
But with times so tough for koalas everywhere, zoo director Tanya Peterson said she was hoping that the koala matchmakers will decide to make an exception enabling the nameless new male and Cynthia to hook up.
“With such a crisis right now, the Species Survival Plan may have to reassess,” Peterson said. “We may receive a different recommendation. I hope so.”
The final decision will be made by the keepers of the U.S. koala “stud book.” Such a volume indeed exists, and it is maintained by zookeepers in San Diego, who must grant a thumbs up to any and all koala lovemaking.
While the koalas await a decision on their fate from Southern California, their fans on Friday clogged the exhibit in San Francisco.
“When you’re that cute, you don’t have to do much,” said Nick Welzie of Maui, who was visiting with his wife, Chieko, and their 16monthold son, Duke, who, like the pandas, was cute and asleep.
Threeyearold Charlie Prince of San Francisco, being carried in a pouch, marsupialstyle, by his mother, Emma, said he liked the koalas almost as much as the flamingos and the kiddie train, which he acknowledged was not an animal.
It’s not a bad life, said koala keeper Morgan Pyeha. She is also charged with looking after the rhinos who, she conceded, were less cuddly. The hardest thing about caring for a koala is keeping up with its eucalyptus needs.
A koala eats nothing but the newest, most tender eucalyptus leaves. They’re fussy and don’t eat every species, and keepers scour San Francisco daily for hidden caches from no fewer than 15 eucalyptus varieties.
“You can say a koala is a fussy eater,” Pyeha said.
An entire branch with hundreds of leaves is presented.
The koala eats a precious few leaves, rejecting the rest. The largely intact branch is then turned over to other zoo animals, particularly the Komodo dragons, who regard a koalarejected eucalyptus branch as “sensory enhancement” and enjoying sniffing it, Pyeha said.
Peterson agreed that the new koala did not know what his name was, did not care what it was and would not come if called by either his old name of Flin, or by new name of whatever it might turn out to be.
“They’re complicated animals,” she said.