Drop Bear

For this week's episode, we're going down under and heading over to Australia for a horrifying falling cryptid, the Drop Bear! How are these monsters related to Koalas? How can you scare one off with a common breakfast item? Find out this week!

Transcript

INTRO:
Hello and welcome to Myth Monsters, my name is Erin and I’ll be your host for these little snack bite size podcasts on folklore and mythical monsters from around the world. 

These podcasts focus on the actual cryptids, folklore and mythic monsters from global mythology, rather than focusing on full stories of heroes and their big adventures.

I’ll also be dropping in some references that they have to recent culture and where you can see these represented in modern day content so you can learn more, and get as obsessed as I am about these absolute legends of the mythological world.

I hope you all had a happy and safe Halloween last week - I’m back from California where I had a fantastic time at BlizzCon and Disney but if you are listening to this on the release day - I’m sure I’m comatose in bed with jetlag so send over a thought for your monster podcaster today. I hope you also enjoyed the Halloween episode - it was a lot of fun to cover Bigfoot finally.

DESCRIPTION:

But this week, we’re heading onto the other side of the world to the lovely Cali and popping over to the Outback for something that you might still see falling out of trees to get you if you’re a tourist. 

We are looking at the Drop Bear this week - an Australian cryptid that is very much related to the cosy and chlamydia infested Koala of this region of the world.

What is a Drop Bear - well in short, it’s a Koala. It’s a marsupial that is around the same size as a large dog, with grey or mottled orange fur and they live in the eucalyptus trees of the Aussie outback. They have fuzzy ears, clawed feet and hands with a large black nose. They are pretty heavily built, with strong arms for climbing said trees, and in contrast to usual Koalas - they are vicious creatures that have long sharp teeth and an odd hatred for tourists. They are also carnivores, which makes them the complete opposite to their herbivorous cousins.

Drop Bears usually hunt from the trees, where they will wait up to eight hours for prey to sit perfectly below their perch - where they drop as far as ten metres to pounce on top of them. They will bite the victim with their sharp teeth on the neck or face, and if the prey is small enough, they will retreat back up to their hiding place to eat without being disturbed by other predators. Unfortunately, some of their victims are indeed children or even adult humans, and they would get bitten or scratched within an inch of their life. They are known to attack larger prey such as Kangaroos and Wallabies too, as well as the smaller Australian furry animals such as Quokkas and such.

Drop Bears are more likely to attack tourists of Australia, and are sometimes reported to be able to speak - but only in an Aussie accent. Australians believe that Drop Bears tend to attack tourists due to the immense amount of the natural repellant, Vegemite, Australians eat on a daily basis - therefore exuding this through their skin at all times, whilst tourists do not have this natural protection. It’s also believed that they can decipher Australian accents from non-Australian, and are more likely to attack the unfamiliar.

They are mostly found in the southeast region of Australia, within the regions of New South Wales, Victoria, The Capital Territory and the island of Tasmania to the south. So actually when I say the outback, it’s more a fun turn of phrase - this monster is very much not in the outback - but in probably the most densely populated parts of Australia, so I apologise for any confusion, it’s just really fun to say. They much prefer leafier habitats where they can get into the trees to get their prey and generally kip where they can, although it is always away from human habitation.

In terms of powers, it doesn’t really have any bar, it's tactical manoeuvring and the long claws and teeth honestly - however, they do have some weaknesses. One way to stop any Drop Bear attacks is to smear the Australian yeast extract, Vegemite, all over your face as apparently they just hate it. If you’re listening in the UK of course, this is just the Aussie Marmite - and if you’re elsewhere in the world - it’s a thick black paste that is super salty, but it tastes very good on toast with butter. 

Another repellant is toothpaste behind the ears or to have numerous forks in your hair to dissuade them from attacking - but most of the times, attacks are accidental and there have been no reported deaths. We’re not sure about their population, reproduction or lifespan - but it is assumed they are very similar to their cousin the Koala, who live for around X years and give birth to live young known as joeys who live in their pouches. They live for between 12-18 years and are mostly solitary creatures, except if they are mother and child. 

ORIGIN:

For etymology - Drop Bear is mostly based on the action of how it attacks its prey. However, Bear comes from the Koala - as it is sometimes mistaken for a bear due to its big nose, ears and paws, however Koalas are actually marsupials, meaning they carry their young in their pouches, much like Kangaroos and Wallabies. They do have a latin name which is Thylarctos plummetus - the latter explaining itself, but arctos in Latin means bear.

BUT because these creatures are so similar, I will tell you about the Koala’s etymology. Koala is Sydney Aboriginal or Dharug for no water. However, when English settlers came to Australia it was commonly referred to as the native bear, which then adapted into the Koala bear. 

Well it’s about time I stop having you on - this monster is a well known hoax and it is always so much fun to cover these seriously for the first section before revealing it. But yes, these monsters are fictional, but all fictional monsters come from something, so that is the history we’re going to go into today.

The history of the Drop Bear is actually very interesting, and it’s because we don’t quite know when it started or when the rumour started being picked up. We do know that it was first mentioned in print in the 1920’s and 30’s in Australia, as people were discussing how Koalas were having aggressive interactions with people and this was followed up with numerous newspapers in the 1940’s, where trainee soldiers were told to scale trees for sniping positions and were given two shillings for every Koala they spotted. In 1946, a report came over from Burma, which was controlled by the Japanese at the time, that the Australians were holding Japanese prisoners of war with rabid Koalas. I have a summary of the report actually;

‘It describes how the Australian guards cowered in fear while the brave Japanese prisoners fought off the koalas, an act for which they were rewarded. There are various versions of the story that have the prisoners either using the guards’ rifles or bamboo sticks to fight off the koalas and also varying types of rewards.’

So it was mostly army folklore - which was apt for the time due to the ongoing WW2 in Europe as well as the Burmese War - then followed by their involvement within Vietnam in the 1960’s. In regards to Australia’s history, the British claimed the east side when James Cook landed there in 1770 and eventually in 1901, the Brits gave Australia it’s Commonwealth status to make its own laws, but the British sovereign is still head of the Australian government today in 2023, and so King Charles 3rd is both the head of the UK and Australia as sovereign - but it’s why Australia was involved in a lot of these wars. 

The myth continued up to the 1980s, where the rabid Koala joke had developed more into an inside joke for Australians. In 1982, the Canberra Times printed a birthday column saying ‘Tam - beware of drop bears in the future, for sure, totally love Clint’. We don’t know who these people are, but this was also backed up by The Paul Hogan Show in the 80’s, who was of course, THE Crocodile Dundee - where they did a sketch called Cootamundra Hoges, where killer koalas would silently just drop out of trees.

There are still pieces published about the Drop Bear to this day - The Australian Museum’s website has a whole page dedicated to it as if it is a real animal and it has an exhibit within the building itself for the Drop Bear that states ‘may or may not relate to actual drop bears’. The Australian Geographic did an article back in 2013 about Drop Bear attacks on the rise for April Fools Day - which I’ll pop on the Twitter because it’s just a really great read. 

I think a great summary of this monster though is one I found on the Australian Geographic’s actual article on the myth from Ian Coate, a folklorist - who said this;

“Just like Vegemite, we Aussies all know about it, but for someone from overseas it’s quite a foreign concept and in a country crawling with so many other dangerous animals like snakes, spiders and crocodiles, for the uninitiated international visitor the drop bear can sound like a plausible threat.”

Now we do have to talk about the real life comparison to the Koala here - I know we’ve touched on it but the Koala is a really important part of the Australian national image. It’s one of the two creatures that personify Australia, the other being the Kangaroo, but both of these are marsupials - which are mostly found in Oceania. Also, it’s not unlikely that a Koala could fall onto you from treetops - they sleep for 12 hours a day on the highest trees, it’s not uncommon that they would sometimes fall off onto unsuspecting people, and I don’t imagine they like falling as much as we would, and maybe would get their claws out if landing on a person which is even in an Aesop fable. 

Koala’s are also used to explain to children to not sit under gum trees, just in case they do break off - and another fun fact is that eucalyptus is highly flammable, as are Koalas - so it might have even been used to dissuade people from lighting fires under their leaves.

Koala’s also are extremely territorial, so they can actually get aggressive with people, and they are pretty gross and aren’t particularly fond of us anyway.

There was however, a real version of a Drop Bear way back in the Ice Age called the Thylacoleo carnifex, which is thought to be a type of marsupial but was around the size of a big cat. Bones of this Ice Age marvel were found in 2010, and they found that they would most likely be tree dwelling, but have the skulls of modern Koalas, so these very well might have existed 12,000 years ago with the Indigenous people at the time.

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CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: 

Now onto modern media, I’ve mostly covered Koala based media here - but there are a few Drop Bear specific bits, just not enough to fill this out.

For art, have a look at the impression from the news network CNN for a really funny version of a Drop Bear, but otherwise - independence is always best with cryptids.

Unrelated to art or modern media, but there’s also an alcohol-free beer company called Drop Bear Beer which has a really good logo and a fun fact page on their website.

In movies, we have; Carnifex, The Rescuers Down Under, Sing, Back to the Outback & The Wild.

For TV, we have; Family Guy, Digimon, The Kwicky Koala Show, The Noozles, Heaven’s Design Team, Koala Man, American Dad, We Bare Bears, Mofli: The Last Koala & Adventure Time.

In video games, we have ones such as; Escape Velocity, Path of Exile, Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, Animal Crossing, The Battle Cats, Crash Bandicoot, Pokemon, Starbound, Temtem, Zork & Yokai Watch 3.

My book recommendation this week for the kids is Drop Bear by Ian Coate - the author I mentioned earlier. For adults interested in Indigenous Australia, have a look at From the Dreamtime: Australian Aboriginal Legends by Jean A Ellis for some lovely stories from this part of the world and their folklore.

DO I THINK THEY EXISTED? 

Now it’s time for, do I think they existed? 

No, but that is a given surely. I do however, fully believe and have seen Koalas in real life and I do just think the Australians have a fantastic inside joke - that you can now all be a part of. If you now go to Australia and someone tells you to look out for the Drop Bear, you can tell them to sod off, completely in the knowledge of what that means. 

I also really like the commitment to the joke honestly, especially from these news outlets and museums, it shows that again, people do really like to embrace their heritage and folklore that makes up the land around them - and that makes me very happy.

I know a lot of Aussies, and this is very typical Australian humour, which I love - it’s silly and a tourist is the butt of the joke, hilarious! Koalas are a bit dumb though, and this does sometimes happen just by accident - so at least you’re kind of forewarned if you end up either being hit by one or seeing one that has already hit the ground I suppose. 

But what do you think? Does the Drop Bear fall out of Australian trees on unsuspecting tourists? Let me know on Twitter!

OUTRO: 

A great monster this week - I really do like going over to Oceania for monsters, as they are always really fun to research and are usually really different to anything we get over here in the west. I hope if you are Australian and listening to this, that I did the Drop Bear proud.

Also just a note - please don’t shout at me in comments because I’ve called things a myth monster - that’s just what they are widely considered to be, I am not the decider here, just a messenger. This also goes for any monsters I cover from anywhere - I give you the research I’ve found and my personal opinion, that is all.

Next week, we’re heading over to India and Ethiopia and looking at a strange mythical wolf, the Crocotta! Make sure you’re keeping a look out for this quick hyena next Thursday!

For now, thank you so much for listening, it’s been an absolute pleasure. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a rating on the service you’re listening on - I’ve got the twitter for any questions, or suggestions on what monsters to cover next and I’d love to hear from you. The social media handles for Tiktok, Youtube, Threads and Instagram are mythmonsterspodcast, and twitter is mythmonsterspod. But all of our content can be found at mythmonsters.co.uk - you can also find us on Goodpods, Buymeacoffee and Patreon if you want to help me fund the podcast too.

Come join the fun though and share this with your pals, they might love me as much as you do.

But for now, stay spooky and I’ll see you later babes.