Discussion on answer by Oddthinking: Do drop bears exist?

-1: Listen it's funny and all to go around saying "drop bears don't exist" but next time you're up at the Daintree rainforest and someone gets hurt because they read some tomfoolery here, don't say I didn't warn you. Irresponsible answer.

@ThalesPereira - Australia is a giant haven for traveller-trolls. Not ONLY do they tell you stories of drop bears, but they like to go on about these giant mice with pouches that supposedly go bounding across the landscape, the 17 different varieties of insanely poisonous snakes, the 23 different species of insanely poisonous spiders, the 8 different species of insanely poisonous jellyfish (imagine! Jellyfish! Hah-hah!) and, just top go for overkill, they'll tell you all about their giant sea-going crocodiles! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! These guys just kill me!!! :-)

For the record, I told a tableful of Australian skeptics at a pub tonight that I had said that Drop Bears aren't real. I was pilloried, and asked to hand in my passport.

I am an Australian. Much though I do not like to admit it (after all, stirring up foreigners is fun) this is most definitely a hoax. Pretty much all Australians will go along with it whenever this is mentioned in front of a foreigner. After all there are poisonous spiders, snakes, jellyfish, and other sea creatures. Why not a cute cuddly marsupial that will gore you to death?

@DavidMulder it's already at the first page for "Do dropbears exist"

@nigel222: Nancy Keesing’s lovely 1982 compilation of Australian slang, “Lily on the Dustbin”, mentions drop bears and suggests (unsourced) that they were invented to scare American GI’s stationed in Australia during WWII. However, they doesn’t seem to be attested earlier in print than that. So it dates back at least to 1982, and almost certainly a bit earlier, but it’s not clear how far.