Another interesting phylogenetic fact… elephant shrews are more closely related to elephants than to shrews.
Hey look I can’t help it if other people post things that are wrong!
However, due to the human-designed nature of teddy bears, DNA evidence can be misleading. The bears were in fact designed based on ursine organisms, and thus could taxonomically be considered descendants.
I’m pretty sure koalas are some sort of bear/pig hybrid, based entirely on the godawful grunting growl the males make at night. They’re fairly numerous where I live and they wake me up regularly during breeding season.
Also, if you ever get the chance to see koalas mating in the wild, don’t; it’s awful. Usually a big male chases a female up a tree and goes at it while she squeals in obvious distress. They’re really not as cute as they look.
And when you cuddle them they piss on you, often as not. Eucalypt smelling piss is not nearly as enticing as it sounds.
I’m not so sure. I am now convinced that drop bears are cryptomarsupials, and it seems to be well established that jackalopes are cryptoplacentals.
Something Jurassic, apparently.
I thought they were related to Roosevelts.
That’s exactly what they want you to think.
Ahh, maybe, that sounds suitably pseudofactual. 
I always wonder about this when I see some divers playing with a sea turtle. I figure the turtle doesn’t understand that the divers are just playing with it and mean it no harm. The turtle probably sees the divers as a large unknown predator and is trying to escape before it’s killed.
We are on The Dope and now suddenly everybody is dissin’ the DNA evidence?
What is your taxonomical stance on rubber ducks?
I’m quite sure that is true for smaller turtles that are trying to get away. But larger turtles will actively remain with divers even though they could swim away so I suspect not. I’ve kayaked right up to large sea turtles at the surface and had them just stare at me balefully when they could easily dive or swim away.
I would have thought, by now, someone would have mentioned that the koala’s appendix is seven feet long.
Is Boo-boo a Koala?
I understand that some people have not seen one and not lived.
“…koalas are not bears.”
They aren’t?
Oh crap.
Be careful around pandas, they’re often packing heat:
Eats, shoots and leaves.
Koalas don’t have very good eyesight, and aren’t particularly stressed by having humans around in the background (as evidenced by the fact that they will come down from the tree and move even when there are people around). They are strong and have tree-climbing claws: nobody likes it when they get stressed.
They can be tame and affectionate and accustomed to strangers when hand-raised. Petting zoos are stressful for all (almost all?) animals, and tame hand-reared Koalas aren’t particularly more stressed than farm animals. But even farm-animal petting zoos should have short sessions and cycle the animals out after a while.
In Aus, the term “Wombat” is sometimes applied to young men.