The opossum, most often just called possum, is one of the most primitive of mammals and the only marsupial in North America. Marsupials are pouched mammals, in which the female does not have a placenta like other mammals but has a nursing pouch instead.
Babies, only two weeks old, incompletely developed and the size of a navy bean, climb from the base of the mother’s tail, through her hair and into the pouch where they attach to a nipple and nurse for 2 months. After that, they leave the pouch and move to the outside world, often traveling on the mother’s back with their tails wrapped around hers.
There are approximately 120 species of marsupials in the Western Hemisphere, most of them occurring in South America. Australia has twice as many, with 250 species, with kangaroos and koalas being the most recognizable. Approximately a third of the wild koalas died in the 2019-20 devastating brushfires in Australia, and the population will probably never regain its original numbers.
Other kinds of Australian marsupials include squirrel, mice, cat (Tasmanian devil), rabbit and dog (Tasmanian wolf), which became extinct in 1936. Marsupials actually originated in South America, and today’s ancestors migrated to Australia during the time of the supercontinent Gondwana, 420 million years ago, when the continents were joined.
Possums are much-maligned little animals because they appear to be slow-witted and aren’t pretty. At least not pretty by our standard of what a furry little animal should look like. They are fairly scruffy-looking. But like most animals, they mind their own business and are just trying to get by. My heart goes out to them.
