Koala Bears - What's in a Name?

Don't you just love koala bears? They look so much like teddy bears - so cute and cuddly. But did you know that they should not really be called koala bears because they are not really bears at all? So where did the name "koala bears" come from?

Before the European settlement in Australia in the late 18th century, the different Australian Aboriginal tribes had different names for the koala such as cullawine, carbora or kola. It is probably from these names that we get our word, "koala." It wasn't until ten years after European settlement that the first recorded sighting of a koala occurred where it was described as resembling the "sloths in America". The koala has also been called a monkey. Maybe the viewers spotted a gray animal perched high in a tree and assumed it was a creature they knew.

The most common term used for the koala in early European settlement years was "native bear". In many publications in the 19th and even into the 20th centuries the koala was referred to as a native bear, or simply, a bear.

Even in the children's story, Dot and the Kangaroo (by Ethel C. Pedley published in 1920) a koala is called a native bear. All through another children's story, Blinky Bill (by by Dorothy Wall published in 1939), which is a story about a naughty koala boy, koalas are called bears and the name of the mother koala alternates between Mrs Koala and Mrs Bear.

If that wasn't enough to convince you that koala bear was the proper name, in 1816 the koala was given the scientific name, phascolarctos cinereus, which means "ash colored pouched bear."

But this scientific name is deceiving because a koala is not a bear at all. It belongs to a group of mammals called marsupials. The mother koala has a pouch in which she carries her baby koala and feeds it milk until it is old enough to exist outside the pouch.