Since this year, without complaints you will no longer receive tests and no more treatment against the relatively innocent chlamydia. For Koalas, on the other hand, there is now an extensive testing and approved vaccine. For the endangered native Australian species, the sexually transmitted bacterial infection, unlike people, is in many cases fatal. In fact, the vaccine must protect the marsupial from extinction.
Koalas are particularly sensitive to Chlamydia. Both males and females can have and pass it on, by mating, but also by sucking. They get ugly urinary tract infections, confluence inflammation at the eyes resulting in blindness, becoming infertile and can die from the bacterial infection – or because they starve – eventually die. It is thought that 50 percent of the deaths are due to the bacterial infection.
Population plummet
For more than ten years, the research team of the University of the Sunshine Coast has worked on the vaccine, hoping to stop the bacterial infection that the population plummeting. In some colonies, especially in New South Wales and Queensland, there is even “an infection percentage of up to 70 percent,” said professor of microbiology Peter Timms to BBC. “And thereby crawl closer and closer to extinction.”
The infected koalas have so far been treated with antibiotics, but that was not without risks either. The koala diet consists almost exclusively of eucalyptus leaves. These leaves are full of poisonous molecules, but thanks to special enzymes in the liver and bacteria in the intestines, Koalas can still digest it – without becoming high. But the antibiotics disrupt that unique defense mechanism against the poison, so that they are less able to digest these leaves. That can also lead to starvation.
The vaccine can ensure that the number of deaths is reduced by 65 percent, but that is not enough, Timms tells the BBC. “The other factors must also be tackled.” The loss of habitat due to urbanization and agriculture and natural disasters such as forest fires do not help either. “But the most important thing is the loss of living environment,” says Timms. “If you don’t have a tree, the rest doesn’t really matter.”
The Koala has been officially labeled by the Australian government since 2022 as an endangered species. There are now an estimated 50,000 animals in Australia, but certain colonies could completely disappear due to chlamydia – even within one generation.
The vaccine, but also the restoration of their natural living environment must ensure that the Koala not only Survives, but Thrives, writes the Australian Milieu Murray Watt Minister on his website. This week, the state of New South Wales announced that it would add 176,000 hectares to the existing nature reserve Great Koala National Park.
Forked penis
There, the Koala, hopefully supported by the vaccine, can work on restoring the population. And that looks slightly different at Koalas. The female, which leads a nice single life for most of the year, looks for a male when the weather will be around December. Only after the deed is an egg release – just like with rabbits, camels and cats. In this way no eggs are wasted on a monthly ovulation, such as in humans.
Even more remarkable is that male koalas, just like most marsup animals, have a forked penis. Although females have one opening, it branches to three vaginas. The suspicion is that one has to do with the other.
What the researchers in Australia do know in any case is that there must be money to be able to roll out the vaccination program. The costs of locating, catching and vaccinating is estimated at 7,000 Australian dollars (converted 3959.65 euros) per koala. Yet Timms hopes that they can give the vaccinations for free. And preferably as quickly as possible, because the Koala must also defy countless dangerous threats without chlamydia. Due to the vaccine, that would at least be one less.