Product Code Database
The drop bear (sometimes dropbear) is a hoax in contemporary Australian folklore featuring a , carnivorous version of the koala. This imaginary animal is commonly spoken about in designed to scare tourists. While koalas are typically docile (and are not ), drop bears are described as unusually large and vicious that inhabit treetops and attack unsuspecting people (or other prey) that walk beneath them by dropping onto their heads from above.Staff Writers. Herald Sun, 24 October 2014. " Australia’s greatest hoaxes: the pranks that tricked a nation".Switek, Brian. Slate, " These Horrifying Creatures Ought to Be Movie Stars".David Wood, " Yarns spun around campfire ", in Country News, byline, 2 May 2005, accessed 4 April 2008
Although the drop bear originated as a hoax, observers have noted its similarities to Thylacoleo, a Hypercarnivore marsupial from the Late Pleistocene.
A 1967 article in Army, the Australian Army's newspaper, mentions "a dreaded Drop Bear", and a 1976 article about an army base refers to "the legends and stories of drop bears and that supposedly originated there". Other early appearances in print include a Royal Australian Navy News article in 1978 and a classified advertisement in the Canberra Times in 1982. Dropbears, an Australian band, formed in 1981.
Australian Geographic ran an article on its website on 1 April 2013 (April Fools' Day) purporting that researchers had found that drop bears were more likely to attack tourists than people with Australian accents. The article was based on a 2012 paper published in Australian Geographer, and despite referencing the Australian Museum entry on drop bears in several places, images included with the Australian Geographic article were sourced from Australian Geographer and did not match the Australian Museum's species description.
The drop bear hoax, using a polar bear, was humorously referenced in an advertisement for Bundaberg Rum.
In the Discworld novel The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett, drop bears inhabit the continent of Fourecks, a land portrayed as a parody of Australia. This version of the drop bear tale shows the animals with well-padded backsides to cushion their fall.
Australian Chris Toms and New Zealand musician Johnny Batchelor formed a band named Dropbears in 1981.
A 2016 Nature study of claw marks in caves concluded the marsupial lions could climb rock faces as well as trees. In a 2018 study, paleontologists conjectured them to be Ambush predator that would leap on unsuspecting prey. Incisions on bones of the extinct kangaroo Macropus titan suggest Thylacoleo fed in a similar way to modern Cheetah, using their sharp teeth to slice open the ribcage of their prey, thereby accessing the internal organs. They may have killed by using their front claws as either stabbing weapons, or as a way to grab their prey with strangulation or suffocation.
|
|
