Koalas have a highly specialized, herbivorous diet and only eat 20 of the 350 eucalyptus species, preferring only 5 depending on their geographic location.
Koalas are herbivorous and folivorous, feeding on both eucalypt and non-eucalypt species.
Koalas have a highly specialized diet in which they eat only 20 of the 350 species of eucalyptus and prefer only 5 species. The koala’s diet is mostly limited to foliage of Eucalyptus species with occasional intake of leaves of other plants, mostly in the Myrtaceous genera, but the bulk of its diet comes from only a few eucalypt species. Eucalyptus viminalis and Eucalyptus ovata are preferred in the south, while Eucalyptus punctata, Eucalyptus camaldulensis and Eucalyptus tereticornis are the taste of the north.
• Image | ©️ Mathias Appel, Public Domain, (CC0 1.0)
• Sources | (Dubuc & Eckroad, 1999; MacDonald, 1995; Moore & Foley 2000, 2005; Woinarski & Burbidge, 2020)
