Criminal Koala

I believe we are all masters of trivia. We all pick things up from simply existing in society, and many tidbits remain with us whether we want them to take up space in our brain or not. I am fairly certain that when I am 90, I will still remember that Jeremy Irons was the voice of Scar in “The Lion King” (which has the added irony that I have NO idea who Jeremy Irons is and could not pick him out of a line-up). In grad school in New Jersey, I impressed my friends at bar trivia by knowing that earthquake are measured on the Richter scale; but having grown up in Washington State, this was a fairly common topic of conversation.

For me, the best pieces of trivia are ones that have a great backstory, or that are fodder for a flight of fancy tale, and being an animal lover, extra points if the factoid involves animals.

My current favorite bit of trivia is that koalas have fingerprints nearly indistinguishable from humans; so close in fact, it could throw off the police in Australia. I absolutely love this. Not least of all because koalas have two thumbs.

It is not known why they have these whorls and loops. Chimpanzees and other apes have fingerprints that resemble ours, but we evolved along the same branches of the evolutionary tree as did apes; koalas did not. Their closest relatives, wombats, wallabies, and kangaroos, do not have fingerprints. Once could speculate that since they are tree dwelling, it perhaps give them better grip while they climb. But other tree dwelling mammals do not have them. Their fingerprints evolved completely independently from ours. Like ours, they are unique from one individual to another.

I like to imagine a criminal mastermind utilizing a koala to pull of a heist, so they do not risk their own fingerprints being left behind. Perhaps training the largely sedentary and usually slow moving animal to open doors, touch windows, pull open drawers, and unlatch cabinets. Perhaps the koala is in some sort of baby bjorn, so the criminal can indicate where he or she wants the koala to perform the maneuver. Perhaps they even train the koala to do it on their own, although given the semi-catatonic state that koalas seem to always exist in, this seems highly unlikely.

Perhaps the koala itself broke into a home for completely non-nepharious reasons, like being hungry or thirsty, or wanting a cool place to relax. Koalas have been known to approach humans during wildfires in search of aid or water.

Or more terrifying, but certainly more thrilling, is a KOALA criminal mastermind, that the stoner demeanor has been a ruse the whole time, and koalas are plotting crimes with the end game of taking over the world. There are urban legends of “drop bears,” which are a mythical creature like a koala bear, but who are more aggressive and are known to drop onto people from the treetops in attack. It’s accepted that drop bears are no real, but were invented as a story to tell gullible tourists. But perhaps they ARE real, and they also leave these fingerprints (being an offshoot of the koala, it would make sense that they would also have the same distinct fingerprints).

In “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy,” dolphins were the second most intelligent animal on Earth (first was mice). Perhaps we can expect a message if koalas start to disappear: “So long, and thanks for all the eucalyptus”. The best we can hope is that any departing animals are good natured.