These parallels have led Dr. Timms to argue that koalas could serve as a “missing link” in the search for a human vaccine. “The koala is more than an elegant animal model,” he said. “It’s actually really useful for human studies.”
An ancient curse
No one knows how or when koalas contracted chlamydia. But the curse is at least centuries old.
In 1798, European explorers arrived in the mountains of New South Wales and saw a creature that defied description: with ears and a spoon nose, he stoically gazed out from the recesses of the huge eucalyptus trees. They compared it to the wombat, the sloth, and the monkey. They decided on the “native bear” and gave it the genus name Phascolarctos (from the Greek for “leather bag” and “bear”), generating the misconception that the koala bear is, in fact, a bear.
“The gravity of the face,” wrote the Sydney Gazette in 1803, “seems to indicate a more than ordinary part of animal sagacity.”
In the late 19th century, Australian naturalist Ellis Troughton noted that the “cute and adorable koala” was also particularly susceptible to disease. The animals suffered from eye disease similar to conjunctivitis, which he blamed for waves of koala deaths in the 1890s and 1900s. At the same time, anatomist JP Hill discovered that koalas in Queensland and New South Wales had They often had ovaries and uteruses riddled with cysts. Many modern scientists now believe that those koalas were likely affected by the same scourge: chlamydia.
Today’s koalas have even more to worry about. Dogs, careless drivers and, recently, rampant wildfires have reduced their numbers so far, so conservation groups are calling for koalas to be listed as endangered. But chlamydia remains paramount: In some parts of Queensland, the heart of the epidemic, the disease helped fuel an 80 percent decline in two decades.
The disease is also the one that most frequently sends koalas to Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital, the country’s most active wildlife hospital, located 30 miles north of Endeavor. “The numbers are 40 percent chlamydia, 30 percent cars, 10 percent dogs,” said Dr. Rosemary Booth, director of the hospital. “And then the rest is an interesting variety of problems you can get into when you have a small brain and your habitat has become fragmented.”
