Scientists have long wondered how Australia's koalas get enough water to live. A new study 1. an answer.
The lead writer of the new report on koalas is Valentina Mella of the University of Sydney. "The earlier 2. was that the animals got most of the water they needed from the leaves they ate," she explains.
In the wild, koalas get water from the plant leaves they eat. But they also get it from water 3. down from the trees when it rains. Mella and other scientists 4. koalas in the wild every year. They find that koalas are 5. at night. They live in trees and depend on them for food, drinking and also for resting places.
Koalas spend most of the time high up in the trees. They eat lots of leaves. An adult koala normally eats 6. 0.5 kg and 0.8 kg of leaves a day. Koalas sleep about 20 hours a day.
Mella notes that a koala usually spends 98% of its 7. in trees. She also notes that they only come down to the ground when they discover another tree with 8. leaves.
In fact, the word "koala" means "no drink" in the 9. language. Koalas did not go down to the ground very often. So it was considered that they had no 10. to drink water.
The koalas' living environment is getting worse now because the fires in Australia have burned about 30% of the forests where they live.

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