History
George Perry's illustration in his 1810 Arcana was the first published image of the koala.
The first written reference of the koala was recorded by John Price, servant of John Hunter, the Governor of New South Wales. Price encountered the "cullawine" on 26 January 1798, during an expedition to the Blue Mountains,[101] although his account was not published until nearly a century later in Historical Records of Australia.[102] In 1802, French-born explorer Francis Louis Barrallier encountered the animal when his two Aboriginal guides, returning from a hunt, brought back two koala feet they were intending to eat. Barrallier preserved the appendages and sent them and his notes to Hunter's successor, Philip Gidley King, who forwarded them to Joseph Banks. Similar to Price, Barrallier's notes did not get published until 1897.[103] Reports of the "Koolah" appeared in the Sydney Gazette in late 1803, and helped provide the impetus for King to commission the artist John Lewin to paint watercolours of the animal. Lewin painted three pictures, one of which was subsequently made into a print that was reproduced in Georges Cuvier's The Animal Kingdom (first published in 1827) and several European works on natural history.[104]
Botanist Robert Brown was the first to write a detailed scientific description of the koala in 1814, based on a female specimen captured near what is now Mount Kembla in the Illawarra region of New South Wales. Austrian botanical illustrator Ferdinand Bauer drew the animal's skull, throat, feet and paws. Brown's work remained unpublished and largely unnoticed, however, as his field books and notes remained in his possession until his death, when they were bequeathed to the British Museum of Natural History. They were not identified until 1994, while Bauer's koala watercolours were not published until 1989.[105] British surgeon Everard Home included details of the koala based on eyewitness accounts of William Paterson, who had befriended Brown and Bauer during their stay in New South Wales.[106] Home, who in 1808 published his report in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,[107] gave the animal the scientific name Didelphis coola.[108]
The first published image of the koala appeared in George Perry's (1810) natural history work Arcana.[109] Perry called it the "New Holland Sloth" on account of its perceived similarities to the Central and South American tree-living mammals of genus Bradypus. His disdain for the koala, evident in his description of the animal, was typical of the prevailing early 19th-century British attitude about the primitiveness and oddity of Australian fauna:[110]
"... the eye is placed like that of the Sloth, very close to the mouth and nose, which gives it a clumsy awkward appearance, and void of elegance in the combination ... they have little either in their character or appearance to interest the Naturalist or Philosopher. As Nature however provides nothing in vain, we may suppose that even these torpid, senseless creatures are wisely intended to fill up one of the great links of the chain of animated nature ...".[111]
Natural history illustrator John Gould popularised the koala with his 1863 work The Mammals of Australia.
Naturalist and popular artist John Gould illustrated and described the koala in his three-volume work The Mammals of Australia (1845–63) and introduced the species, as well as other members of Australia's little-known faunal community, to the general British public.[112] Comparative anatomist Richard Owen, in a series of publications on the physiology and anatomy of Australian mammals, presented a paper on the anatomy of the koala to the Zoological Society of London.[113] In this widely cited publication he provided the first careful description of its internal anatomy, and noted its general structural similarity to the wombat.[114] English naturalist George Robert Waterhouse, curator of the Zoological Society of London, was the first to correctly classify the koala as a marsupial in the 1840s. He identified similarities between it and its fossil relatives Diprotodon and Nototherium, which had been discovered just a few years before.[115] Similarly, Gerard Krefft, curator of the Australian Museum, noted evolutionary mechanisms at work when comparing the koala to its ancestral relatives in his 1871 The Mammals of Australia.[116]
The first living koala in Britain arrived in 1881, purchased by the Zoological Society of London. As related by prosecutor to the society, William Alexander Forbes, the animal suffered an accidental demise when the heavy lid of a washstand fell on it and it was unable to free itself. Forbes used the opportunity to dissect the fresh female specimen, and thus was able to provide explicit anatomical details on the female reproductive system, the brain, and the liver—parts not previously described by Owen, who had access only to preserved specimens.[117] Scottish embryologist William Caldwell—well known in scientific circles for determining the reproductive mechanism of the platypus—described the uterine development of the koala in 1884,[118] and used the new information to convincingly place the koala and the monotremes into an evolutionary time frame.[119]
Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, visited the Koala Park Sanctuary in Sydney in 1934[120] and was "intensely interested in the bears". His photograph, with Noel Burnet, the founder of the park, and a koala, appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald. After World War II, when tourism to Australia increased and the animals were exported to zoos overseas, the koala's international popularity rose. Several political leaders and members of royal families had their pictures taken with koalas, including Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Harry, Crown Prince Naruhito, Crown Princess Masako, Pope John Paul II, US President Bill Clinton, Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev and South African President Nelson Mandela.[121]
Cultural significance
History
George Perry's illustration in his 1810 Arcana was the first published image of the koala.
The first written reference of the koala was recorded by John Price, servant of John Hunter, the Governor of New South Wales. Price encountered the "cullawine" on 26 January 1798, during an expedition to the Blue Mountains,[101] although his account was not published until nearly a century later in Historical Records of Australia.[102] In 1802, French-born explorer Francis Louis Barrallier encountered the animal when his two Aboriginal guides, returning from a hunt, brought back two koala feet they were intending to eat. Barrallier preserved the appendages and sent them and his notes to Hunter's successor, Philip Gidley King, who forwarded them to Joseph Banks. Similar to Price, Barrallier's notes did not get published until 1897.[103] Reports of the "Koolah" appeared in the Sydney Gazette in late 1803, and helped provide the impetus for King to commission the artist John Lewin to paint watercolours of the animal. Lewin painted three pictures, one of which was subsequently made into a print that was reproduced in Georges Cuvier's The Animal Kingdom (first published in 1827) and several European works on natural history.[104]
Botanist Robert Brown was the first to write a detailed scientific description of the koala in 1814, based on a female specimen captured near what is now Mount Kembla in the Illawarra region of New South Wales. Austrian botanical illustrator Ferdinand Bauer drew the animal's skull, throat, feet and paws. Brown's work remained unpublished and largely unnoticed, however, as his field books and notes remained in his possession until his death, when they were bequeathed to the British Museum of Natural History. They were not identified until 1994, while Bauer's koala watercolours were not published until 1989.[105] British surgeon Everard Home included details of the koala based on eyewitness accounts of William Paterson, who had befriended Brown and Bauer during their stay in New South Wales.[106] Home, who in 1808 published his report in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,[107] gave the animal the scientific name Didelphis coola.[108]
The first published image of the koala appeared in George Perry's (1810) natural history work Arcana.[109] Perry called it the "New Holland Sloth" on account of its perceived similarities to the Central and South American tree-living mammals of genus Bradypus. His disdain for the koala, evident in his description of the animal, was typical of the prevailing early 19th-century British attitude about the primitiveness and oddity of Australian fauna:[110]
"... the eye is placed like that of the Sloth, very close to the mouth and nose, which gives it a clumsy awkward appearance, and void of elegance in the combination ... they have little either in their character or appearance to interest the Naturalist or Philosopher. As Nature however provides nothing in vain, we may suppose that even these torpid, senseless creatures are wisely intended to fill up one of the great links of the chain of animated nature ...".[111]
Natural history illustrator John Gould popularised the koala with his 1863 work The Mammals of Australia.
Naturalist and popular artist John Gould illustrated and described the koala in his three-volume work The Mammals of Australia (1845–63) and introduced the species, as well as other members of Australia's little-known faunal community, to the general British public.[112] Comparative anatomist Richard Owen, in a series of publications on the physiology and anatomy of Australian mammals, presented a paper on the anatomy of the koala to the Zoological Society of London.[113] In this widely cited publication he provided the first careful description of its internal anatomy, and noted its general structural similarity to the wombat.[114] English naturalist George Robert Waterhouse, curator of the Zoological Society of London, was the first to correctly classify the koala as a marsupial in the 1840s. He identified similarities between it and its fossil relatives Diprotodon and Nototherium, which had been discovered just a few years before.[115] Similarly, Gerard Krefft, curator of the Australian Museum, noted evolutionary mechanisms at work when comparing the koala to its ancestral relatives in his 1871 The Mammals of Australia.[116]
The first living koala in Britain arrived in 1881, purchased by the Zoological Society of London. As related by prosecutor to the society, William Alexander Forbes, the animal suffered an accidental demise when the heavy lid of a washstand fell on it and it was unable to free itself. Forbes used the opportunity to dissect the fresh female specimen, and thus was able to provide explicit anatomical details on the female reproductive system, the brain, and the liver—parts not previously described by Owen, who had access only to preserved specimens.[117] Scottish embryologist William Caldwell—well known in scientific circles for determining the reproductive mechanism of the platypus—described the uterine development of the koala in 1884,[118] and used the new information to convincingly place the koala and the monotremes into an evolutionary time frame.[119]
Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, visited the Koala Park Sanctuary in Sydney in 1934[120] and was "intensely interested in the bears". His photograph, with Noel Burnet, the founder of the park, and a koala, appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald. After World War II, when tourism to Australia increased and the animals were exported to zoos overseas, the koala's international popularity rose. Several political leaders and members of royal families had their pictures taken with koalas, including Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Harry, Crown Prince Naruhito, Crown Princess Masako, Pope John Paul II, US President Bill Clinton, Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev and South African President Nelson Mandela.[121]
Cultural significance
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