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Carbon Dioxide Threatening Koalas
Koalas are threatened by the rising level of carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere because it saps nutrients from the eucalyptus leaves they feed on, a researcher said Wednesday.
Ian Hume, emeritus professor of biology at Sydney University, said he and his researchers also found that the amount of toxicity in the leaves of eucalyptus saplings rose when the level of carbon dioxide within a greenhouse was increased.
Hume presented his research on the effects of carbon dioxide on eucalyptus leaves to the Australian Academy of Science in Canberra on Wednesday.
The researchers found that carbon dioxide in eucalyptus leaves affects the balance of nutrients and "anti-nutrients" -- substances that are either toxic or interfere with the digestion of nutrients.
An increase in carbon dioxide favors the trees' production of carbon-based anti-nutrients over nutrients, so leaves can become toxic to koalas, Hume said.
Some eucalyptus species may have high protein content, but anti-nutrients such as tannins bind the protein so it cannot be digested by koalas.
Hume estimated that current levels of global carbon dioxide emissions would result in a noticeable reduction in Australia's koala population in 50 years due to a lack of palatable leaves.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (7)
at 11:54 on May 7th, 2008
This is bad news since the koalas have no alternative food source: eucalyptus is all they can eat (hence their sluggishness: they're tooled to conserve as much energy per unit of food eaten as is possible).
at 12:09 on May 7th, 2008
Ah, well, we got a few years to try to correct the situation. Could we just turn off all those gas-spewing volcanoes, please?
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alistair_35at 15:32 on May 7th, 2008
A beautiful little Koala at Healesville Sancturary in the Yarra Ranges, Victoria, Australia
alistair_35 has contributed a photo to this story.
at 16:49 on May 7th, 2008
Notice how the C02 is making this koala's hair turn pre-mature grey. It is a tragedy and communist and socialist nations like China that are pumping all the poison in to the atmosphere must be stopped by free-enterprise countries who can afford the technology to reverse tragedies like these!
richard-ugadawg 1990 has contributed a photo to this story.
at 17:58 on May 7th, 2008
Steph02, I like this story. It's good stuff. It's another example of unintended consequences. Everything is connected to everything else. Poor little guys.
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Kostas Kat 19:28 on May 7th, 2008
This is an electricity factory in Greece. It is a pity that in Greece that we have so much sun and so much wind we have to pollute the environment so much in order to produce electricity...
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thetaipanat 17:02 on May 8th, 2008
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andy_shell86at 01:27 on May 9th, 2008
When first seeing this koala, I thought it wasn't real, then it started moving, he would've been 15 metres up, at a country market in south east qld.
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