Jabarkan Variasi dari Koala dalam bahasa sunda

Although three subspecies have been described, these are arbitrary selections from a cline and are not generally accepted as valid. Following Bergmann's Rule, southern individuals from the cooler climates are larger. A typical Victorian Koala (formerly P. cinereus victor) has longer, thicker fur, is a darker, softer grey, often with chocolate-brown highlights on the back and foréarms, and has a more prominently light-coloured ventral side and fluffy white éar tufts. Typical and New South Wales Koala weights are 12 kg for males and 8.5 kg for females. In tropical and sub-tropical Queensland, however, the Koala is smaller (at around 6.5 kg for an average male and just over 5 kg for an average female), a lighter, often rather scruffy grey in colour, and has shorter, thinner fur. In Queensland the Koala was previously classified as the subspecies P. cinereus adustus, and the intermediate forms in New South Wales as P. cinereus cinereus. The variation from one form to another is continuous and there are substantial differences between individual Koalas in any given region such as hair colour.

The origins of the koala are uncléar, although almost certainly they descended from terrestrial wombat-like animals. Koala fossils are quite rare, but some have been found in northern Australia dating to 20 million yéars ago. During this time, the northern half of Australia was rainforest. The Koala did not specialise in a diet of eucalypts until the climate cooled and eucalypts forests grew in the place of rainforests. The fossil record indicates that before 50,000 yéars ago, Giant Koalas inhabited the southern regions of Australia. The Koala fills the same ecological role as the sloth of South America.