Koalas Sleep Up to 22 Hours a Day

Koalas are the champion sleepers, sometimes clocking out for up to 22 hours a day. The culprit behind their sleepiness? Their exclusive diet of eucalyptus leaves. The leaves of the eucalyptus plant are toxic to all creatures, including koalas, but these marsupials have developed a defense against the toxins that allows them to digest these fibrous leaves. That digestive system, however, takes up a lot of energy, meaning koalas need plenty of rest in between meals. When they are awake, koalas use their scant stamina to, what else, eat more eucalyptus leaves.

The perk about a diet of eucalyptus leaves is that the plant is full of water, meaning koalas don’t need to spend extra time searching for a water source. The downside? Those microbes in their digestive system that allow them to digest the leaves come from their mothers’….excrement. Babies will eat their mothers’ feces to acquire the defensive microbes that allow them to eat eucalyptus.