I’m forever correcting students’ misconceptions about New Zealand, chiefly that we don’t have kangaroos, koalas, and didn’t deserve to lose the 1999 rugby world cup semi-final against those French bastards. Anyway, back to the koalas - why are they called “no tail bears.” It’s not as if other bears have bloody tails. Imagine you are looking at a zoo enclosure containing a black bear, a brown bear, a sun bear, and a koala. “Which one is the koala?” someone asks. “It’s the one without a tail” you answer. I don’t think so!
And while we are on wildlife, not literally of course, can anyone tell me which came first “clouded leopard” or “yun-bao”?
Don’t other bears have wee stumpy little tails?
umm… Koalas aren’t even bears, aren’t they ? so it’s worse then you thought… In that scenario you mentioned, wouldn’t the other bears eat the koala ? 
Just to get this thread back on topic:
A bear and a koala are pooping in the woods. The bear looks at the koala and says, “Hey, koala, do you have a problem with poop sticking to your fur?” The koala looks at the bear and says, “Why no, Mr Bear.” So the bear wipes his ass with the koala.
When Eddie Murphy told that joke, it was with a bear and a rabbit. And I never understood something–wouldn’t the bear WANT shit to stick to the rabbit’s fur? Otherwise it wouldn’t make good toilet paper.
[quote]umm… Koalas aren’t even bears, aren’t they ?[/quote]Yes. That’s why they’re called Koala bears.
Was that an Eddie Murphy joke? I could have sworn I heard it in grade school, and I’m not THAT old.
Ah, therein lies the rub.
Most people lack the style and sophistication to retell it properly, replacing “Do you have a PROBLEM with sht sticking to your fur" with simply "Does sht stick to your fur”-- thereby losing the double entendre.
Back on topic (AGAIN!!!), bears, at least Formosan black bears, apparently do have short, stubby tails: Click here.
And if you need to know why koalas don’t have tails: Click here.
[quote]
umm… Koalas aren’t even bears, aren’t they ? [quote]
Yes. That’s why they’re called Koala bears.[/quote][/quote]
us slang. do you have a problem with = do you mind? so goes the double entendre
“Tree bag bears” appears to be the literal translation fom Mandarin. Where does “no tail bears” come from? Is there an altogether different term in Taiwanese for them?
I doubt there’s a different Taiwanese word for koalas. Most “new” (that is, post-1948) Taiwanese words seem to be derived from Mandarin.
Oh, and don’t forget pandas, the “cat bears”
One of my favorites is “Bag mouse” for Kangaroo.
Yes, bears do have short stumpy tails but the tails aren’t that noticeable from a safe distance. My students always translate “wuweixiong” as “no tail bear.”
Anyway, it’s better than “no balls bear”
One of my favorites is “Bag mouse” for Kangaroo.
Yes, bears do have short stumpy tails but the tails aren’t that noticeable from a safe distance. My students always translate “wuweixiong” as “no tail bear.”
Anyway, it’s better than “no balls bear”
Spot on with the koala problem. The Chinese don’t really have a clue do they. I mean owls (mao tou ying) aren’t really parrots and don’t have the heads of cats, popcorn (bao mi hua) is hardly a flower and not made of rice, and someone already mentioned that kangaroos (dai shu) aren’t big mice with bags (or is it pockets).
brian
A confession:
I’ve used the name when telling stories about the danger of Australia’s animals to confuse/amaze/scare foreigners and build the myth of the Aussie outback (worked like a charm in the States), but, um, what exactly is a “drop bear”? I always knew it to be a pissed-off koala with a nasty disposition that jumps out of trees to rip people’s heads off.
Christ, I’m gonna get flamed for this one… 
The Big Babou
Or porcupine (hao zhu) … heroic pig?
Where did you get “tree bag bears” from monkey? In my dictionary it says the Chinese for koala is [i]kaola /i. Obviously one of those typical Chinese attempts at transliteration. The common term for koala in Taiwan is wuweixiong ( 無尾熊). It means “without tail bear” as previously mentioned.
If you want to know a little bit more about the famous (and deadly) dropbears read this:
[quote]‘Of course, you’ve got to be careful of drop bears: they’re everywhere at this time of year.’
‘Drop bears? What on earth are they?’
‘Well, they’re these bears that are distantly related to koalas, and they hang around in trees, sleeping most of the time.’
‘What’s so dangerous about that?’
'Well, when a drop bear gets hungry, he sits there, up in the tree, looking round for something to eat. And he sits and sits and sits, and waits until some unsuspecting animal wanders under his tree and then - wallop! - he drops down on top of ‘em. So if you happen to be walking under a tree when a drop bear’s looking for a meal, you’re in for a nasty shock.’
‘Yeah…’
‘But the worst thing is the claws. Because they have to climb trees, they’ve got long, sharp claws for gripping bark, and if a drop bear lands on you, the chances are he’s going to rip huge gashes down your back. It’s not a pleasant way to go; the loss of blood can be enough to kill you, even if he decides not to eat ya.’
‘No shit…’
‘Yup, and they just love trees in sleepy suburbs, so watch it when you’re walking to the pub, eh.’
‘Yeah… thanks man.’
‘No worries. Anytime…’
Source: moxon.net/australia/drop_bears.html[/quote]
And don’t say I didn’t warn you 
btw koalas are not bears. They are marsupials and belong to a completely different class of animal to bears. The only common ancestor they share with bears is some prototypical mammal that lived 200 million years ago.
That’s the only reference in Dr. Eye’s dictionary.
This entire thread is unbearable.
Chou
[quote=“Sir Donald Bradman”]Spot on with the koala problem. The Chinese don’t really have a clue do they. I mean owls (mao tou ying) aren’t really parrots and don’t have the heads of cats, popcorn (bao mi hua) is hardly a flower and not made of rice, and someone already mentioned that kangaroos (dai shu) aren’t big mice with bags (or is it pockets).
brian[/quote]
Ying (鷹) is more like a hawk (which an owl is). Their head does look kind of like a cat’s, with the ears sticking up. The hua in bao mi hua doesn’t mean flower, but a colliquial way of saying “popped.” For example, nao3dai4 kai1hua1 (腦袋開花) means “head split/popped open.” True, kangaroos aren’t mice, but remember that Tom and Jerry cartoon where Tom thought that a kangaroo shipping from Australia in the crate was a big mouse and got the crap beat out of him?