Scientists in Australia have discovered how to save starving koalas whose fussy eating habits make them vulnerable to habitat loss: by feeding ...
SYDNEY: Scientists in Australia have discovered how to save starving koalas whose fussy eating habits make them vulnerable to habitat loss: By feeding them poo.
Michaela Blyton of the University of Queensland's School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, the paper's lead author, said she was inspired to act after a devastating drop in the population of koalas in Cape Otway in Victoria. This in turn led to a 70 per cent mortality due to starvation - but they did not start feeding on a less preferred tree species called messmate even though some koalas feed only on messmate."This led me and colleague Dr Ben Moore at Western Sydney University to wonder if the microbes present in koalas' guts - their microbiomes - were limiting which species they could eat, and if we could allow them to expand their diet with faecal inoculations," said Blyton.
The capsules successfully altered the manna gum eating koalas' biomes, allowing them to eat the messmate.
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