Koala around and its head has doubled in size. The eyes begin to open and fine fur grows on the forehead, nape, shoulders, and arms. At 26 weeks, the fully furred animal resembles an adult, and begins to poke its head out of the pouch. As the young koala approaches six months, the mother begins to prepare it for its eucalyptus diet by predigesting the leaves, producing a faecal pap that the joey eats from her cloacum. The pap is quite different in composition from regular faeces, resembling instead the contents of the caecum, which has a high concentration of bacteria.
Koala digest. While the hindgut is proportionally larger in the koala than in other herbivores, only 10% of the animal's energy is obtained from fermentation. Since the koala gains a low amount of energy from its diet, its metabolic rate is half that of a typical mammal, although this can vary between seasons and sexes. The koala conserves water by passing relatively dry faecal pellets high in undigested fibre, and by storing water in the caecum. The koala's geographic range covers roughly , and 30 ecoregions. It extends throughout eastern and southeastern Australia, encompassing northeastern, central and southeastern Queensland, eastern New