Dictionary

Australian teddy bear en · NOUN

Meanings

1. (colloquial) A koala.
   • You probably know this Australian teddy bear that feeds on eucalyptus leaves. 2025, Nicolas Mathevon, The Voices of Nature: How and Why Animals Communicate, page 121:
   • The koala was therefore constructed as a lovable pet, an Australian teddy bear which one reporter described as a "charming little creature, a more perfect natural pet is not to be found anywhere in the world" […] 2021, Lyle Munro, Man is the Cruelest Animal: Essays on the Human-Animal Link:
   • The koala, or Australian teddy bear, is a familiar example of this. Less well known, perhaps, to us on this side of the Atlantic, is a similar behaviour in the American opossum. 1956, Maurice Burton, Infancy in Animals, page 175:

Forms