Koala Bears, after all - not Gowachin!

[Kalessin]

In FoH, when we finally reach Samara on the Ghealdan side of the river, we see the animals Valan Luca has in his menagerie. RJ's slipped it in, so quietly you'd never notice, but I am re-reading the series, and this leaped out at me:

Quote

and some waddling, brown-furred creatures with big eyes and round ears that sat placidly eating leaves from branches gripped in their forepaws. Luca’s tale on where they came from varied- she supposed he did not know-and he had not been able to make up a name for them that pleased him.

I've seen them in Tidbinbilla in ACT. They're koalas. I suppose RJ may have had a visit or two to Australia, and perhaps visited Taronga Park Zoo in Sydney, or so.

[Andra]

The bigger question is - where did Luca get eucalyptus to feed them?

Perhaps they were a brown species of pandas, and the "branches" were bamboo?

Edited May 23 by Andra

[DojoToad]

Eucalyptus in endemic to eastern Cairhein...  

 

😉

[Samt]

Maybe during the age of legends, a zoological Aes Sedai realized that animals with very specific and restrictive diets, like Koalas and Pandas, should be modified to be more flexible.  Maybe Aginor before he went off the deep end.  

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

But koalas are neither placid or brown. Cannot say I find it particularly convincing. I'm sure something more fitting passed briefly through my brain, but it is gone now. So I cannot improve on the suggestion, thus koalas it is for now.

 

Edit: I did some research into waddling animals and a wombat would appear to more fitting to the description, though not sure they would hold leaves as described. Either that or a duck, which possibly is stretching plausibility. Maybe.

Edited May 24 by HeavyHalfMoonBlade

[Samt]

So I just read the Wikipedia article on Wombats and today I learned that Wombat poop is cube shaped.  We don’t fully understand how or why, but it is suspected that wombats poop in cubes so that they can stack their poop to mark their territory.  

[Andra]

3 hours ago, Samt said:

So I just read the Wikipedia article on Wombats and today I learned that Wombat poop is cube shaped.  We don’t fully understand how or why, but it is suspected that wombats poop in cubes so that they can stack their poop to mark their territory.  

Obviously, a use of the One Power in the natural world.

Saidin or Saidar?