Australian teddy bear

plural Australian teddy bears

1. colloquialA 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

   2 more examples

   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

   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