13 Terrifying Animal Traits You Probably Thought Were Cute
Everyone loves cute animals. Whenever we see one, something clenches deep inside ours heart and we just want to love and squeeze and hold them forever. But behind every cute face lies the capacity for utter and complete monstrosity, savagery beyond imagination, and just plain grossness. Here are a few horrifying facts about some animals you may have wanted to squishy face in the past. Some of these are utterly disgusting. You've been warned.
We all love baby koalas. They’re fuzzy, heartwarming little bears that we just want to cuddle and love forever. But did you know they eat poop?
Turns out baby koalas can’t digest eucalyptus leaves, so they stimulate their mother’s cloaca, which is a combined digestive, reproductive, and urinary tract, to make her poop out pap, a wet and slimy bacteria-filled poop that gets them prepared to digest eucalyptus leaves on their own.
“The leaves are really hard to digest, they’re tough and fibrous,” Caroline Monro, Wild Life’s main koala keeper explained. “So once the joey feeds on pap it allows them to get that gut bacteria into their stomach, so they can then digest these eucalyptus leaves.”
See that fuzzy bear clinging to a tree? Don’t pick it up because it might have an STI. In fact, in some parts of Australia, up to 90 percent of the bears are infected.
Australian wildlife officials are doing everything they can to combat the illness, but it’s an uphill battle.
The disease can cause conjunctivitis, urinary tract infections, and infertility. Don’t be worried about catching it though – koala to human transmission is super rare, although One Direction did have a scare once.
Don’t worry, Harry Styles definitely didn’t catch it.
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