I have heard koalas are vicious.?

Question

If they are afraid they will claw you and rip you apart to defend themselves. They look so cute. Is this true.

Answer 1

What ? this cute face??

My cousins the drop bears are the vicious ones !

http://www.cfr.com.au/dropbears/

Answer 2

Yes they have claws but what I have seen on get away etc is that they are friendly loving animals. They are so cute. I am  in Melbourne

Answer 3

All of the answers above are correct.

They are muscular with long, strong claws. After all they do climb trees to get about the place. They are also very grumpy most of the time.

Just don't ever let one pee on your car.

(Don't park under gum trees.)

Koala pee strips the colour out of the paintwork better than anything you could think of.

Answer 4

Yes they have sharp strong claws for climbing trees and even if they arent trying to hurt you (to get away from you) their claws can scratch and cut very easily.  They dont attack, but if you try to grab one you might get a real surprise.  You should hear the males at night... they snort and grunt and groan like some monster in the dark... very frightening for anyone who is camping and hasn't heard one before.

Answer 5

they have claws but i would be shocked if they could rip you apart - I live in Australia and have never heard of it happening.

Answer 6

Koalas can be quite vicious if afriad, The ones you get to pet at wildlife sanctuarys and zoos and used to being with people so there's no problem but if you ever saw two koalas mating thn you truly would see their vicious side. their long claw designed for digging into tree trunks have no problem with flesh

Answer 7

Yes.

They are extremely savage when annoyed.

There was an incident when some people broke into a zoo and tried to take off with one.  They didn't succeed but the police did manage to get skin samples from underneath the koala claws the next morning from some very aggravated koalas.

Edit:

They won't rip you apart (e.g. kill you) but you can get really badly mauled if you keep trying to fight one.

Answer 8

yes that is true ,yet it is very easy to train them to like u,like the ones u see at zoos that are sitting on the zoo keepers sholder...ppl have found that the koala gets( stoned) fron the euki leaves that thay eat hence why thay are so slow and sleep a lot and get cranky in a snap...lol

Answer 9

Like any wild animal, just don't try and grab one of them. In any case, the millions of ticks that crawl all over them would kill you before they would.

Answer 10

I'm from Aus and i can tell you that yes, they'll definitely rip your skin pretty badly with their long and strong claws.

I've heard of them attacking humans and i've also seen footage of 2 males fighting over a female in the wild. Let me tell you that they can be very vicious if they want to be.

Answer 11

Well they won't entirely rip you apart, but yes, they do have very strong, long claws which are used to defend themselves.  There are many Koalas bred in captivity in the Australian zoos  that you can confidently hold though, they aren't afraid of humans so they don't attack.

Also, even if you came across one in the wild (which is rare) it would run away before you got close anyway.

Answer 12

Yes we have coomon phrases in Australia associated with vicious animals.

"Bitten on the bum" - Frilled neck lizard

"Kicked in the goolies" - Kanagroo

"Dive bombed and pecked in the eye" - Magpies

"Shitted on from a great height" - Seagulls

and

"Pissed on by a...." - Koala

Answer 13

YES absolutely...out in the wild they r very defensive..scratch etc...and are so loud in their screeching at night !!!

..you only get to see the tame ones in the parks and zoos .