I'm going to take a wild guess, and say the first time you heard of drop bears was from a recent Pharyngula post that mentioned them. I'm guessing a few people were introduced to the concept by that post.
As both an Australian citizen and an avowed skeptic, this is a difficult question to answer...
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?
"playing on travellers' fears of the local wild-life" - As if Australia even needs to invent a fictional animal in order to do that, with the number of venomous (and freakishly large; +1 for the kitchen knife) spiders and snakes lurking about in the bush.
@Jamiec - If you can think of anything funnier than a squad of US Rangers wandering the outback with Vegemite behind their ears, I'd love to hear it. Also, what's funny about a Blue Ringed Octopus, Box Jellyfish Funnel Web Spider or Death Adder? Whereas, a vicious Koala = Comic Gold
@JAB Koalas exist too and, from what I understood, that's what these "drop bears" are eluding to (but I'm not from Oz, nor have I visited, so I could be misinterpreting these details.) A "Snipe Hunt" is a long standing tradition that one usually sends a new hunter or camper on, often involving pillow cases, peanut butter, climbing trees and making ridiculous "calls" that would scare any living creature away. The point is, this is a prank you are playing on someone who is new to experiencing the outdoors. In America, we'd have the same fun by sending our Aussie friends on such a Snipe Hunt.
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.
Does anyone know when the Australian hoax first started? I had always thought that drop-bears were invented by Terry Pratchett, in "The Last Continent" (published 1998). Which is set on the Diskworld, on a continent called Fourecks, which is not completely dissimilar to Australia (apart from its being fictional, and quite definitely having drop-bears. Also spiders even more deadly than the ones in the real Australia).
"or visible sign (forks in their hair)." - now I'm forced to wonder if the stuff about wearing ice cream cartons on your head to protect from magpies is also a hoax.
@nigel222: I can offer personal anecdote that the drop bear reports predated The Last Continent. Pratchett visited Australia for at least the second time in 1994, so probably heard the stories.
-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.
@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.
@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!!! :-)
@Thales While people are generally very welcoming of visitors, good-natured trolling of newcomers is definitely traditional. I've seen people go to extraordinary lengths to set up and carry off a good hoax.
@Jamiec, I think the point is that koalas are not bears and far from being as dangerous as bears, so the Australians reacted in the way of inventing the dropbear. I my mother tongue German, it is hard to tell people that this animal is called "Koala" (koala), not "Koalabär" (koala bear), I can image that this is true to many other languages too. Making fun of it is just the next step.
Discussion on answer by Oddthinking: …
Discussion on answer by Oddthinking: …