The drop bear myth says Australia is home to a killer species of koala that will jump from trees and latch onto you. It has created a shocking feel among tourists for decades. Actually, where did the drop bear myth originate from? However, they believe that this vegemite paste can save their lives from aggressive koalas. How is it would be?
According to the US visiting soldiers over the past 40 years, they have exactly believed it. They have called it Aussie allies, and they believe that people can reduce the risk of being attacked by a drop bear by covering cheeks and forehead in the yeast extract. Actually, how does this herbivorous animal create a carnivorous picture in a human’s mind?
The drop bear myth and imagined precautions have created a comical image, although international soldiers and tourists believe it. How does this kind of plaster save human lives? It is a wonderful joke.
The Australian Museum put below-bestowed advice to their visitors on their official website. “There are some suggested folk remedies that are said to act as a repellent to Drop Bears. These include having forks in the hair or toothpaste spread behind the ears,”
The myth of the drop bear has been well-publicized due to this action. Actually, the origin of the drop bear myth isn’t quite as well-known. Because of that, its beginnings are clouded in the mists of time.
The term ‘drop bear’ didn’t perform in newspapers until 1982. It was started when the following message was written in the 21st Birthdays column of The Canberra Times on 31 July. “TAM — Beware of drop bears in the future, for sure, totally love Clint,”
We may never know who was precisely TAM and Clint? Sometimes TAM was a fan of The Drop Bears, or perhaps he has made a new story with these Innocent koalas, or it was just a saying of someone. But now, it is a well-known story.
A spokesperson for the Australian Government Department of Defense says, “Numerous fictional fantasy stories published in newspapers in the 1920s and ’30s describe attacks and aggressive interactions by koalas with people”
“It is likely these stories were built upon during World War II and then matured in the 1970s and ’80s, after which the term drop bear has become more widespread.”
He has explained more about it “For example, a newspaper article from 1943 describes a training program for junior leaders that encouraged the trainees to look to the treetops to spot snipers and they were encouraged to do so by the training staff dropping small explosive charges on to them at random times. The other form of encouragement was a payment of two shillings for every koala they spotted,”
There are numerous articles from 1946 regarding this theme. A report in a Japanese-controlled Burmese newspaper describes an attack at a prisoner of war camp in Australia holding Japanese POWs by some vicious and savage koalas.
According to the defense insider, “the report 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.”
The legend was mainly part of army lore to jump into popular culture in the late 1970s and early 1980s. How is it happen? It seems the leading factor was none other than that dynamic doyen of mid-late 20th-century Aussie larrikinism, Paul’ Hoges’ Hogan.
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) was the first Indiana Jones film when shown the concept of drop bears as a comedy. The Paul Hogan Show featured drop bears in a skit in his television comedy. Drop bear myth came out as “untold horrors of the Australian bush” here. It says that killer koalas were silently dropping out of trees.
The concept of killer koalas wasn’t explicitly called drop bears; one person who is in no doubt that this skit was central to perpetuating the myth is Ian Coate.
Lan says that” recalls Ian who runs Mythocreatology, a website that delves into the spurious past of a long list of Australian myths.
What I really like about the drop bear is that it’s something that all Australians can embrace – from Indigenous to European, from young to old, it’s common for all of us,” whole of Australia was watching it virtually because There wasn’t much else on TV back then.
“Just like Vegemite, we Aussies all know about it, but for someone from overseas it’s quite a foreign concept,” he explains, adding “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.”
The drop bear has a rosy future due to today’s propagation of digital and social media. According to the authors of Man-Eating Teddy Bears of the Scrub: Exploring the Australian Drop Bear Urban Legend, “the drop bear has acquired a place within the digital legend cycle, and the internet has become one of the most popular domains for the dissemination of this urban legend.”
Drop bear, in the real sense of the word, you are a legend.
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