Koalas aren’t the most social of animals: they move mostly at night, live mostly-independent lives, and don’t group together or socialize, except when they’re planning to mate. So how do they find each other when they need to? Male koalas use deep resonating calls, or bellows, to send messages across the dense eucalyptus forest about where they are – but new research by Dr Benjamin Charlton (University of Vienna) and collaborators in Brisbane, Australia, shows these calls also relay important information about the caller’s size. Their work was published this week in the international peer-reviewed journal The Journal of Experimental Biology (doi:10.1242/jeb.061358).
When it comes to koala mating and territory defense, size matters.
