My name is Kenny and I'm a koala.
I'm native to Australia, which means that I'm originally from there.
I eat, sleep, and live in the eucalyptus forests of Australia.
I eat only the leaves of the eucalyptus trees.
I can eat up to five hundred grams of leaves a night.
At night, you ask? Yes, at night.
I like to eat during the night and sleep during the day. I'm nocturnal.
I don't drink a lot of water.
That's because I get all the water I need from the leaves.
In some of the native Australian languages, koala means "no drink."
That's how we got our name.
I sleep in the branches of the eucalyptus tree.
After I eat, I pick out a nice big branch and sleep.
I usually sleep twenty hours a day.
I sleep a lot, don't I?
The rest of the time, I eat and move around.
I like to live up in the branches of the eucalyptus trees.
I have two thumbs on each paw and long, sharp claws that make it easy for me to climb up and down the tree trunks.
I can also leap from branch to branch.
When I run out of leaves to eat, I climb down and run to another tree.
I don't like to stay on the ground too long because of cars and dangerous predators like the dingo, an Australian wild dog.
I'm a type of animal called a marsupial.
Other marsupials are the kangaroo, the Tasmanian devil, and the wombat.
Marsupials are different from other mammals because, unlike most mammals, the baby is underdeveloped when it's born.
It needs to finish developing in its mother's pouch.
You see, when a baby koala is born, it is very, very small─almost the size of a pink jelly bean.
Although the baby is blind and deaf, it crawls its way into the mommy's pouch.
The baby attaches itself to the mother's nipple to get food to grow big and healthy.
A baby marsupial is called a joey.
So, baby kangaroos are also called joeys.
First, the joey develops eyes, ears, and fur.
At about five months, the joey's eyes open and it's able to peer out of the pouch.
When it is six months old, the joey gets too big for the pouch and can't fit inside.
When that happens, the joey rides on the back of its mother.
A joey leaves its mother when it becomes one year old, or when it gets a little brother or sister.
In my case, I enjoyed staying with my mommy until I was one.
But I was also very excited to go off on my own.
I like to live by myself.
I'm territorial, which means that I don't like other koalas coming too close to where I live.
But if you're nice, you can visit me anytime.