A koala has hitched a 16-kilometre road trip in Australia clinging to the axle of a four-wheel drive vehicle. The female koala had crawled into the wheel arch while the car was parked in the hills on the outskirts of Adelaide, the state capital of South Australia.
The small koala was saved after the driver stopped and heard the cries of the traumatized animal. The fire brigade was eventually called to take the wheel off in order to help a wildlife rescue worker free the animal.
After a couple of days of feeding in captivity, the koala was released back into the wild. Koalas, often inaccurately described as “bears”, are marsupials, an order of mammals whose young are suckled in a pouch. The koala was listed as a “vulnerable” species under an Australian conservation law in 2012. There are fewer than 100,000 of the animals left in the wild, perhaps even as few as 43,000, according to Australian Koala Foundation estimates.