The Australian Drop Bear pours fear into the hearts of anxious travellers heading Down Under and with good reason! We have the some of the world’s most deadly animals, quite literally, in our backyards.
I’ve seen so many people asking on webites like TripAdvisor, what they can do to protect themselves against these ferocious animals so I thought I’d put together this guide on how to survive another one of Australia’s most deadly animals, the Drop Bear.
What is a Drop Bear?
According to the Australian Museum, the Drop Bear (Thylarctos plummetus) is a large, arboreal, predatory marsupial, related to our cute and cuddly koala.
Quoting the Australian Museum – “It is a heavily built animal with powerful forearms for climbing and holding on to prey. It lacks canines, using broad powerful premolars as biting tools instead.”
While they don’t particularly target people, they literally launch themselves out of trees onto unsuspecting prey, aiming for the neck!
Unfortunately there have been several cases where hikers have been attacked and ended up with horrible lacerations from the Drop Bear’s claws and deadly teeth. Worse, some have even died.
Where are Drop Bears found in Australia?
Drop Bears are mostly found in the eastern states of Australia in closed canopy forests and woodlands around the forests.
They are never found near roads or human habitation.
How to Protect Yourself Against Drop Bears
Strangely, Drop Bears tend to target people with foreign accents more often than Aussies, according to Australian Geographic.
Dr Volker Janssen, from the University of Tasmania, believes this is because of vegemite!
Most Aussies eat vegemite, a dark yeast spread with a very strong flavour that we put on toast and in sandwiches.
Apparently Drop Bears can smell vegemite in human sweat and they hate it!
So one of the biggest defences against an attack from a Drop Bear is eating vegemite every day while you’re in the country.
Unfortunately vegemite is an acquired taste! You may have seen videos on YouTube of non-Australians trying vegemite for the first time?
So if you really can’t stand the taste, you can wipe some on your face, behind your ears or under your armpits if you plan to go hiking anywhere near Drop Bear territory.
Image courtesy of iancoate.com
STOP! STOP! STOP!
It took me a long time to decide whether or not to write this coz I’m probably going to get lambasted by every Aussie reading this….
Maybe I should start with the fact that Australians have a really cheeky sense of humour …
Aaaaand maybe we can take things a little too far …
especially if you are, as we say in all good humour, a gullible twit!
If you’ve been reading this with avid interest and taking notes to keep yourself safe on your next trip to Australia, I’m sorry to tell you that you’ve been seriously hoaxed!
But please don’t feel bad!
It is THE most reputably supported hoax I’ve ever come across!
Australian Geographic is in on it – read the fine print at the bottom of the article.
The Australian Museum is in on it – they even allocated it a Latin name!!
ResearchGate is in on it
Trip Advisor is in on it.
Travel agents are in on it.
Every Australian is in on it!
And because tourists fall for it, you all make it so easy to keep stringing you along!
But honestly it is done in the best of humour!
Cross my heart!
So Where Did The Drop Bear Rumour Start?
I honestly don’t know! My guess is that some yokel was “taking the piss” out of a friend or family member visiting from overseas and it just snowballed from there!
When I came across the comments on TripAdvisor and did some googling, even I was thrown by all the information on the Australian Museum website!
To be clear though – it’s all bullshit! (Bloody hell, you’ve really brought out the Aussie colloquialisms in me!)
Photoshopped Koalas
What amazes me, despite our humourously reputable Australian Geographic and Australian Museum’s descriptions of Drop Bears being the size of a leopard, all photos of Drop Bears look exactly like normal koalas except with very big teeth (thank you Photoshop!).
Courtesy of Wikipedia
Attacking Koalas
And koalas do seem to leap out of trees! Normally they’re trying to leap to another branch but they’re pretty good at spectacular fails! Check out the video below.
These branch jumping failures could look like an attacking leap in the right light so I can see how this may have led to the hoax snowballing.
The Spotted Quoll
A friend of mine works as an animal keeper in a small local zoo and she was telling me about Spotted Quolls around the same time that I was thinking of writing this post.
Now these guys do jump out of trees for their prey. They do have a nasty set of choppers (teeth) and they do go for the throat or back of the neck. Apparently if they only manage to grab onto, say a kangaroo’s leg, they will continue to bite and climb up their victims until they reach the neck to kill it.
Image courtesy of Bush Heritage Australia
And they have been reported attacking people but I truly suspect that it would have been cornered and very defensive.
When my zoo friend was telling me about them, I could see how these aspects of the Spotted Quoll could certainly lend themselves to the Drop Bear hoax.
Spotted Quolls, although formidible predators, are the size of a cat, are only found in pockets of habitats, are very shy and are on the endangered species list – so you don’t have to worry about them when you’re hiking in Oz!
Maybe There Was A Drop Bear?
An interesting article on the National Geographic website talks about an animal that had similar characteristics to the hoax Drop Bear.
And yes I can hear you all now thinking “well we’re not likely to believe that either!”.
Honestly less likely a hoax because they’re talking about an animal that’s now extinct.
Image courtesy of National Geographic
Paleontologists discovered remains of Thylacoleo carnifex, a prehistoric koala that resembled a lot of the hoax Drop Bear’s attributes including the body size, big teeth and nasty claws and possibly even it’s hunting behaviours were the same.
Another piece of information that may have added to the hoax snowballing.
Cultural Myths and Legends
To be honest I probably totally overthought the Drop Bear hoax!
But as it’s such an iconic Aussie legend, and being an Aussie, I really wanted to look into how this particular one became bigger than Ben Hur.
How does any cultural legend start? I suspect, scarily, somewhere in truth!
This particular myth has also given me a reminder of Australian humour in a time gone by.
In early settlement days, survival in our harsh country was hard, giving way to the constant optimism of “she’ll be right mate”; the kind of optimisim that came from laughing when you should be crying.
Traditionally we were good at “taking the piss” but with “no hard feelings mate!”
And while sadly I feel like we’ve lost some of that optimism and mateship, it can still be found in our continuation of the Drop Bear hoax and that gives me some heart.
And while the hoax is determinedly at your expense, I hope you see the Aussie larrikin for what we are – full of kind-hearted humour that we’ll take you on for a country mile, all the while winking between ourselves.
To any Aussies reading this – I’m sorry!
I hope you “keep pulling their leg” – it would just be unAustralian to stop!
If they’re gonna be that gullible well …. what can I say?!
To all my international friends reading this, my pleasure for giving you the heads up. But I’d like to think you have a bit of Aussie spirit in you, to keep it on the downlow or jump on the bandwagon
Don’t forget your vegemite everyone!
The eastern spotted Quoll
