O Possum! My Possum!

“Virginian Opossum” by John James Audubon.

It’s high time to shine a light on an under-appreciated nocturnal visitor to America’s backyards and garbage cans: the opossum.

The opossum is the only marsupial in North America, and they’ve been snuffling around since before the dinosaurs died. It faints at the slightest threat, yet can be struck by a venomous snake and, unfazed, turn right around and eat it. 

Also, they have two vaginas, and an extra pseudo-vagina. What more do you need? The opossum’s superpower is its reproductive system, and the thing that’s really going to make you say “holy scat!” is what’s going on in that pouch. 

So…what’s it going to take to get some respect for the opossum?

Featuring: Jessica Anderson, Joseph Bruchac, Danielle Draback, and Frannie Greenberg.

CREDITS

Host: Nate Hegyi

 Reported and produced by Jessica Hunt

 Edited by Taylor Quimby

 Additional editing help from Nate Hegyi, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Rebecca Lavoie

Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer

Music for this episode by Walt Adams, SINY, and Blue Dot Sessions

Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Special thanks to Nick Capodice of Civics 101 podcast.

Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.

If you’ve got a question for the Outside/Inbox hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back.

Audio Transcript

Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.

Nate Hegyi: One afternoon last summer, Producer Jessica Hunt toured a backyard unlike any other:

Frannie: No one is in here. We're preparing this for our bobcat. We’ve got our first bobcat. This is another porcupine. This is an ambassador that stays with us forever. We have 18 skunks right now throughout these enclosures.

Nate Hegyi: This place is the Millstone Wildlife Center in Windham, New Hampshire. One of the tucked-away places where sick or injured animals go after being found and reported by good samaritans.

#Jessica Hunt: Frannie Greenberg is the Executive Director, and when she gave me a tour, she had her phone like a necklace around her neck, and she wore it the entire time.

Frannie: We get phone calls, regularly, often, all day, all night (laughs).

But I was there to get to know one particular creature, kind of mysterious…

[Hissing] Jessica Hunt: Oh, my goodness. You would scare me. I would back off from you. 100%.

Jessica Hunt: An opossum

Nate Hegyi: It sounds it sounds like a grumbly old man!

Jessica Hunt: He totally startled me. It came out from nowhere else and he was like grrr.

(growling and nervous laughter)

Jessica Hunt: You know, they lack the appeal, the natural appeal, of the foxes or the raccoons we walked by. They have grayish fur with a white face and a pointy nose - and a long, naked pink tail…

Frannie: Not everybody is a fan of opossums, and I think primarily that's because the hairless tail often reminds people of rats or mice.

Nate Hegyi: I mean, you can understand why they get a bad reputation - If this guy was five times bigger and had darker fur, he would be just like the swamp creature from The Princess Bride.

Clip: Wesley, what about the ROUS’s?
Wesley: Rodents of Unusual Size? I don’t think they exist. [monster sounds]

Jessica Hunt: But this is no rodent. Opossums are marsupials. They’re more closely related to kangaroos and wombats than they are mice or rats!

And I guarantee what I’m going to tell you about the Virginia opossum, didelphis virginiana, is going to transform how you think about opossums. You will be incredibly popular at parties. You will be telling people factoids about opossums for sure.

Jess A: the craziest part is that they have two vaginas, right? Two vaginas, two uteruses. And the males have a bifurcated penis, right, to match.

Nate Hegyi: What? Two vaginas. A penis that splits in half. Why? Why?

[theme]

Nate Hegyi: On this edition of Holy Scat, we are going to rehab the image of North America’s only marsupial, from a nocturnal, garbage-eating pest to something closer to an American icon. Plus, we will of course talk more about that bifurcated penis and two vaginas.

Jessica Hunt: Literally more, because there’s a third temporary vagina too.

Nate Hegyi: What??

Jessic: Hold on to your tails, Nate.

Nate Hegyi: I got it, you’re channeling your inner Samuel L. Jackson.

Jessica Hunt: I’m that cool.

[mux]

Jessica Hunt: So let’s talk about some of the awesome things that people probably already know about opossums.

Nate Hegyi: OK, I’m ready.

Jessica Hunt: Many folks know that opossums have a prehensile tail, which means it can grasp things. They use it almost like a fifth appendage. It helps them with their balance when they’re climbing trees. They can even use it to help gather leaves and grasses to make a cozy nest.

Nate Hegyi: I would like to have a prehensile tail. I could have that like holding my coffee mug and I take a sip of coffee while I'm typing and working.

Jessica Hunt: Microphone.

Nate Hegyi: Yeah. Yeah, it can hold my microphone.

Jessica Hunt: People think that they hang from their tails, but they really don't, they can only do that when they’re little, like very little, or for a super-short period of time. And they don’t sleep hanging upside down.

Nate Hegyi: what about those photos of opossums hanging onto their mother’s back?

Jessica Hunt: That is with help from their tail, but also with what Frannie calls “death grip paws.” And those are thanks to an opposable hallux, a clawless big toe on their hind feet.

Nate Hegyi: So is it like a thumb? A foot thumb?

Jessica Hunt: Yes, it is. It is, to me, the scariest thing about opossum, is those feet hands.

Nate Hegyi: I think they’re sounding cooler and cooler with every new fact that we hear. I mean with long prehensile tails, wild foot thumbs. I don’t know, I’m gaining a bigger appreciation for the opossum.

Jessica Hunt: Another somewhat commonly known fact, Nate, can you take a guess?

Nate Hegyi: Let me think.

Jessica Hunt: What’s a thing you know about possums?

Nate Hegyi: Oh…let me see…oh they play dead!

[“Playing possum” montage]

Jessica Hunt: we call it playing dead or “playing” possum, but they’re not acting. It's something they don’t control - it’s an involuntary reaction - almost like they faint in the face of danger.

Nate Hegyi: They’re just like, ‘oh that’s scary, I’m going to check out.’

Jessica Hunt: Right. Their system goes into a catatonic state, it’s called “thanatosis” or “tonic immobility” like catatonic. Its body gets flooded with stress hormones and chemicals, the opossum goes limp. Their heart and respiratory rate goes down, they lose bowel control, their eyes don’t blink… and they start to drool.

Nate Hegyi: I feel like I do that everytime I’m faced with having to do something stressful….with the exception of losing bowel control. That’s a bummer for possums.

Jessica Hunt:They can be in this state for minutes, or up to 4 to 6 hours.

Nate Hegyi: What happens though if they’re like, oh my god, I saw a car on the highway, ugh, I’m going to faint. And then they’re out for like 4-6 hours! That doesn’t seem like a very good evolutionary trait.

Jessica Hunt: It doesn’t, it doesn’t, and they can be like pawed by a predator, but they don’t perceive that, and they’re basically grossing out the predator to the point where the predator’s evolutionary instinct kicks in and they’re like “Oh, god, I don’t eat rotten dead things - this could be bad for me, I’ll move on.”

Nate Hegyi: Maybe it is a better evolutionary trait than I thought, when it comes to predators; it doesn’t really help when it comes to cars.

Jessica Hunt: Yeah, cars, not so much.

Nate Hegyi: I’ve also heard that they eat tons of ticks? Like, that they’re tick vacuums?

Possums eat 99% of ticks that get on them, so they’re like little vacuum cleaners.

Jessica Hunt: Yeah, a lot of people have that perception, unfortunately it seems to not to be bearing out.

There was a widely publicized study that showed captive opossums will eat boatloads of ticks when grooming, but afterwards, studies of wild opossums put those results into question. So more research needed to know for sure.

Nate Hegyi: That’s a bummer, that’s minus one for possums, I thought that that was one of the best things honestly that they had going for them.

Jessica Hunt: Well they do eat the mice, they do eat the mice that carry ticks. So there’s that.

[mux]

Jessica Hunt: Let’s talk about some of the stuff a lot of folks DON’T know about opossums.

Nate Hegyi: Ok.

Jessica Hunt: So first, they have fifty teeth - which is more than any other land mammal in North America.

Nate Hegyi: How many h teeth do we have?

Jessica Hunt: We have 32.

Nate Hegyi: Oh, yeah. They’re way teethier than we are.

Jessica Hunt: Yes, an opposum’s skull almost looks like an alligator’s, it’s so narrow and then it has all those teeth bristling out of it. And they can - and will - use those teeth to eat just about anything: plants and fruit, bugs, birds, your tossed out garbage, dead animals.

Nate Hegyi: The ultimate omnivores.

Jessica Hunt: They have a very short life of about 2 years… but they’re evolutionary all-stars: they’ve survived, mostly unchanged, for 70 million years.

Nate Hegyi: That is a really long time.

Jessica Hunt: Right. Its ancestors were scurrying around when Tyrannosaurus Rex was still around.

Nate Hegyi: That is so wild. They should’ve been in Jurassic Park. I wish Jurassic Park had had them jumping off of trees and biting people in their necks or something.

Jessica Hunt: This took a dark turn.

[mux]

Jessica Hunt: So you know how some people say OH-possums, and some people just say possums?

Nate Hegyi: Yeah.

Jessica Hunt: Well those are actually different animals. Our North American friend is an OH-possum.

And the various species of possums are similar animals that live mostly in Australia and New Zealand.

Nate Hegyi:, are they related whatsoever?

Jessica Hunt: They are - and actually, ALL marsupials, like kangaroos, wombats, koalas, all those creatures that are characteristically Australian - all descended from something resembling our North American opossum.

Nate Hegyi: Really!

Jessica Hunt: And the only limit to the opossum’s range here is really cold winters; they can get frostbite on their ears and tail. But the opossum has been moving further north in the last century as winters warm. And it was first seen in southern New England in the 1930s, and now they’re all over the place.
Nate Hegyi: I didn’t know that! I just assumed that possums had always been in New England since time immemorial. I didn’t realize that they’re like recent transplants.
Jessica Hunt: Exactly, they are. And they’ve been in what is now the United States since before first contact - and people have definitely been paying attention.
Joe Bruchac: I also love the feel of opossum’s fur. It's like no other animal. It has a kind of a wonderful delicacy and strength to it.
Jessica Hunt: Joe Bruchac is a wildlife rehabilitator and an Abenaki tribal member. The word “opossum” is a borrowed word that originally means something like “white faced one or “white nosed one”

Joe Bruchac: Opossum is a Pamunkey word. The Pamunkey dialect of the Algonquin Tongues

Jessica Hunt: Joe told me the Cherokee story about what happened to the Opossum’s tail. They say Possum was very vain because his tail was long and silky, and covered with silvery hair:

Joe Bruchac: And he always liked to sort of drape it over his arm and walk around telling everyone, Look at my beautiful tail. Isn't it the best tail of all?

Nate Hegyi: Oh Possum, you shouldn’t do that. I think the other shoe’s gonna drop for you.

Jessica Hunt: Raccoon decided to do something about that, so Raccoon (and cricket, in another version) gave Possum a tail care routine that he said would make it even more stunning.

Joe Bruchac: So Possum did exactly that. Put on the medicine, wrapped the tail in a rattlesnake-shed skin and waited for a week.

Nate Hegyi: Never trust raccoons.

Jessica Hunt: So then after that week, he called all the other animals together because he wanted them all to see how wonderful his tail was after this special treatment.

Joe Bruchac: And as he unwrapped that rattlesnake skin, not only the skin came off, but so too did all of his hair, leaving it as naked as can be and no longer looking beautiful. He was so embarrassed that he immediately threw himself down on the ground and pretended to be dead. And to this day it is said Possum still does that when someone gets too close and sees his or her tail, Possum immediately rolls over and pretends to be dead…Still embarrassed to this day!

Nate Hegyi: That was a jerk move on racoon’s part, or cricket’s part. Like, c’mon guys.

Jessica Hunt: So all of these folks who were telling stories about opossums were definitely chowing down on opossum.

Nate Hegyi: Wait, chowing down? They’re eating the opossums?

Jessica Hunt: Been on the menu since the very beginning. Apparently, they taste like pig. But, if you’re going to eat an opossum, you want to capture them alive; that’s not too hard, because they cooperate by playing dead.

Or they be could “treed” with dogs, basically scared up a tree, and shaken out alive.

Nate Hegyi: I don’t know if it’s the greatest evolutionary trait, you know, playing dead. I don’t think it’s the best move.

Jessica Hunt: And there’s even an old folk song about possum-hunting by a guy named Sam Lucas, a free Black man born in Ohio not long before the Civil War. But I want you to hear a recording done by someone else in 1940. It’s from the Library of Congress.

Nate Hegyi: Carve him to the heart!

Jessica Hunt: So you wanted to catch them alive, especially in the fall, when things like acorns and nuts were plentiful. .

And because opossums are renowned scavengers, so if you have the opportunity to feed them “clean food” - like table scraps as opposed to disgusting roadkill - the meat will be healthier and tastier.

Jessica Hunt: So traditionally, opossum was served with sweet potatoes, and Black folks were considered the culinary experts on Opossum, and that’s in part because opossum hunting was popular among enslaved people who sometimes had dogs but usually weren’t allowed guns.

But opossum, it was popular with just about everybody in the south - even the Joy of Cooking had a recipe for cooking opossum.

Nate Hegyi: Really the Joy of Cooking had it. Would you eat opossum, if someone was like, hey I’ve got some opossum cooking in the back, want some?

Jessica Hunt: I would want to try it, for sure.

Nate Hegyi: Same, especially cuz it tastes like pig I heard, so maybe it tastes like bacon.

Jessica Hunt: Bacon, I don’t know.

Jessica Hunt: There was a time when opossums were so popular to eat that they would be included as part of a Thanksgiving spread, in fact, President William Howard Taft had a 30-pound Georgia opossum as well as a turkey at his Presidential Thanksgiving.

Nate Hegyi: So they were really popular!

Jessica Hunt: In fact, there are so many presidential possum facts I decided to put together a little trivia quiz, based on a series of Folklife Today blogs called “Of Possums and Presidents.” Wanna play?

Nate Hegyi: Yes, but, honestly, I think I am the wrong person for this - can I call in a ringer?

Nick Capodice: yes, yes, hello. This is Nick, hello.

This is our friend and colleague Nick Capodice, cohost of another NHPR podcast called Civics 101.

Jessica Hunt: OK, Nick, I feel like you actually may know the answers to this, let’s see how you do. “Presidential Pet Possums”

Nick Capodice: “Presidential Pet Possums” OK, let me see!

Jessica Hunt: So, first question: one early president, who was a farmer, animal lover, and dog-breeder, tried to send a pair of opossums to Ireland - who was the President?

Nick Capodice: Wow. So you said he was a dog breeder.

Jessica Hunt: Yep.

Nick Capodice: Was it George Washington!

Jessica Hunt: You got it!

Nate Hegyi: Good guess Nick.

Nick Capodice: Well you said early!

Jessica Hunt: That was the clue.

Nick Capodice: Well thank you thank you.

Jessica Hunt: I have another one. Which president asked to have some opossums sent to him when he was in France serving as an ambassador prior to his presidency.

Nick Capodice: The only president I know of that had this sort of tenuous relationship with France. And this is a guess. Thomas Jefferson.

Jessica Hunt: Yes, you're two for two.

Nate Hegyi: Two outta two.

Nick Capodice: Okay. He also was obsessed with wooly mammoths, apparently. He had mammoths on the brain all the time.

Jessica Hunt: All right, I have another one. This president lost the popular vote, but he must have been popular with the Republican Party because he had a pair of pet opossums named after planks of the Republican Party.

Nick Capodice: Now, Jessica, this one I know because we hosted a round of presidential pets on Civics 101 once. So I knew like, you know, John Quincy Adams had a Silkworm and Donald Trump never had a pet. But I am pretty sure that the only president at this era who had possums in the White House is Benjamin Harrison.

Jessica Hunt: You are correct.

Nick Capodice: And they had…what were their names, Jessica? Like Mr. Humanity and Mr. Something?

Jessica Hunt: Mr. Protection and Mr. Reciprocity.

Nick Capodice: Mr. Reciprocity, get out of that garbage can!

Nate Hegyi: Those are really great names.

Jessica Hunt: All right, one more. Which president grew up during the Great Depression and recalls hunting and eating opossum growing up?

Nick Capodice: So it's someone who grew up in the Depression. So I'm going to think about this. Hold on. Give me a second. Give me a second. Remembers eating possum.

Jessica Hunt: Grew up in the south.

Nick Capodice: Yeah. Jimmy Carter?

Jessica Hunt: You got it!

Nate Hegyi: I was about to give you a peanut hint, but you're too good. You don't need hints.

Nick Capodice: Oh, that was, that was a shot in the dark.

Jessica Hunt: Jimmy Carter said the best way to eat opossum was, quote, in very small quantities.

Nate Hegyi: So he didn't think it tasted like bacon, like pig.

Jessica Hunt: Yeah. Apparently he was not fond of it.

Nate Hegyi: Nick, thank you so much for taking my place in this trivia game. I really appreciate it. And just so everybody knows, like, where can we find you? What's the podcast again?

Nick Capodice: It's called Civics 101 from NHPR. And much like Outside/In you can find it wherever you get your podcasts or at our website, civics101podcast.org.

Nate Hegyi: It's a really great podcast. I love it. You all should give it a listen.

Jessica Hunt: Absolutely. Thanks, Nick.

Nick Capodice: Thank you, Jessica. And bye, guys.

Nate Hegyi: Coming up, we look at the bonkers opossum reproductive system, and go inside the pouch to find out more about what really sets possums apart from all other mammals.

Jessica Anderson: I know people who leave leftovers in their refrigerator longer than it takes for a possum to bake a little cookie tray of baby possums.

And speaking of pouches, we'd love it if you dug deep into yours to make a donation to New Hampshire Public Radio. To find out how, look at the show notes.


BREAK


Nate Hegyi: Welcome back to Outside/In, I’m here talking about the awesome opossum with Jessica Hunt, who is working to rehab their image from giant ghost rat, to American icon, on par with the American bald eagle.

Jessica Hunt: That's right. I am all about opossum advocacy. I don't know how I got here, but here I am. It is what it is.

Nate Hegyi: And so far, we’ve heard about a prehensile but rat-like tail, more teeth than any other land mammal in North America and as the featured dish for Thanksgiving. What else do you have to convince us that the opossum is really awesome?

Jessica Hunt: Oh, Nate, strap in. We’re going to talk about the two wildest things about opossums, things that set them apart from all the other mammals on the continent, and it’s not the teeth or tail. The first is reproduction.

Nate Hegyi: We got a little taste of this earlier.

Jessica Hunt: Yes, and head’s up for the kiddos and parents, it’s going to get very anatomical here.

Nate Hegyi: The birds and the bees and the opossums.

Jessica Hunt: That’s right. So we’re going to start off with the males. Things are arranged differently: their testicles sit in front of their penis; and their penis… it’s bifurcated, it’s split.

Nate Hegyi: They're like the Picasso version of a mammal. Everything's a little off.

Jessica Hunt: And you do have to kind of imagine it because they keep it within their body. So you're not likely to see one unless the opossum is playing dead…

Nate Hegyi: Why does it emerge when they're playing dead? Like, well, that one's definitely dead. I can see his penis.

Jessica Hunt: So I can’t really answer that, Nate, but I do know that you’re more likely to see it if you’re a rehabilitator like Jessica Anderson at the Blue Ridge Wildlife Center in Virginia.

Jessica Anderson: We've had a few come in that were feeling down and out. So it was just kind of hanging out. But it's got two heads to it, essentially. So it splits almost like a forked snake tongue, in that way. And then so when they're mating, it matches and can go into both vaginas of the female.

Jessica Hunt: And those two vaginas of the female lead to her two uteruses.

Nate Hegyi: two different uteruses?

Jessica Hunt: Yes. If you recall, the scientific name for the Virginia opossum is Didelphus Virginiana. And in Greek, Didelphus means double womb.

Nate Hegyi: Double womb. Okay. Yeah.

Jessica Hunt: And then marsupial is Latin for “of the pouch.”

Nate Hegyi: So like having a pocket, like a kangaroo.

Jessica Hunt: Right. I always thought that the pouch was just the animal equivalent of a Baby Bjorn. But it's actually a crucial part of the marsupial reproductive system.

So they don’t have a fully functional placenta. It’s very short-lived, and that’s where the pouch comes in.

At two weeks after conception, baby opossums are still essentially embryos. You can fit twenty of them in a teaspoon.

Nate Hegyi: In a teaspoon - that’s tiny.

Jessica Hunt: They’re about the size of a bee! But they have already developed front limbs and little front claws.

Because - instead of being born - they basically claw their way out of their mother’s body.

Jessica Anderson: and then instead of using one of those vaginas as this lovely little exit area, her uterus says, actually, no, we'll just dissolve a little area of connective tissue and the embryos will literally crawl out and exit that way.
And they call it a pseudo vaginal canal. But I like Anne Hilborn’s name for it, which is Space Portal Vagina. I prefer that. I think that's much more exciting.

Nate Hegyi: I feel like whatever created or whoever created the opossum was just having fun. They were just throwing stuff at the wall. I mean, like, let's try this.

Jessica Hunt: And this is just ten to twelve days after becoming pregnant.

Jessica Anderson: I know people who leave leftovers in their refrigerator longer than it takes for a possum to bake a little cookie tray of baby possums.

Jessica Hunt: Now, the mother opossum's nipples are hidden inside the pouch, and there are thirteen of them. Twelve in a horseshoe shape, and one in the middle.

Nate Hegyi: It sounds like a fantasy novel.

Jessica Hunt: So once those tiny babies, swim, army crawl, up the mom’s abdomen to the pouch, then,

Jessica Anderson: It's a race to the finish. She can have over 20 babies, but only the 13 that connect to a nipple will survive. So she's like, I made more than I need. Somebody's got to get there.

Nate Hegyi: brutal. Immediately. It's a race for survival.

Jessica Hunt: But it’s also incredible, right?

Nate Hegyi: Incredibly incredible.

Jessica Anderson: It's so cool to look at compared to what we think of as our norm and what we're used to and how humans go through it. And for possums to just be like, yeah, you know, twice a year I just pop out 25 little popcorn, chicken nuggets, hope for the best. And then 2 to 3 years from now, I hope one of them replaces me. It’s crazy.

Jessica Hunt: So unlike kittens and puppies, or horses and humans, they all use their tongue and pressure to draw out the milk from the nipple, but the tiny opossums mouths seal onto the nipple and that slowly drips down their throats, like an IV. A constant drip, for about nine weeks, until their eyes are open and they have their fur and they can climb out of the pouch and onto Mom’s back.

Nate Hegyi: Basically like a whole stage of pregnancy is taking place there, instead of in the womb.

Jessica Hunt: Exactly. Which brings us to an existential question, when was the opossum born? Was it when it clawed its way out the space portal vagina, or when it emerges from the pouch?

Jessica Anderson: So I’m always confused when people bring us possums and they bring us babies and they're like, How old do you think they are? And I'm like, I have no idea, because what is birth? Is birth coming 10 to 12 days or is birth emerging from this external womb, which it essentially is. They don't have belly buttons, they don't have umbilical cords because they get all that nutrients from the nipple that they're now connected to.
So it's just like if nature was like, how can we do this in another way? They were like - marsupials! Excellent.

Nate Hegyi: So after reproduction, I’m almost afraid to ask what the second wildest thing is about opossums.

Jessica Hunt: Well, we have less genitalia in this one. So, the second wildest thing is that opossums have an uncanny resistance to snake venom. They can be struck up to 80 times by a venomous snake before they feel the effects of the venom. They eat venomous snakes.

Danielle Drabeck: I think you could say the most venom resistant species in the world, perhaps besides snakes, resistant to their own venom.

That’s Danielle Drabeck, she’s a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota.

Snakebite death in the US is rare, but venom can still mess you up permanently because it gets in your bloodstream and starts ripping tissue apart.

Nate Hegyi: Like, yeah, venom is super nasty. And I know like every time I'm walking in rattlesnake country, I always have my dogs on leash because I would hate to see them get bit by a rattlesnake.

Jessica Hunt: Yes. So the opossum has evolved like, an automatic protective mechanism that circulates in the blood and deactivates the venom.

Nate Hegyi: Great move, Possum. Like, I get that you've got some. Some strange, otherworldly things about you, but that was a smart move.

Jessica Hunt: Yes, and it may be the key to their adaptability over time.

Danielle Drabeck: And they're like, Oh, maybe I can eat even more toxic things and then maybe I can eat even more toxic things. And then that's how you evolve to super toxic resistant mammals.

Nate Hegyi: So, to recap. Super toxic-resistant mammals, that eat almost everything, that reproduce quickly. I’ll give it to you, Jessica, these are pretty amazing animals.

Jessica Hunt: Aren’t they? So, here we are ignoring them in so many ways - but they are absolutely thriving.

Nate Hegyi: What do you mean?

They can be trained to use a litter box if they end up at a wildlife rehab center, but they have no trouble returning to the wild, even after having been fed regularly.

They don’t stake out a territory but they opportunistically move to wherever they can find food.

Nate Hegyi: So you could drop them off 50 miles from from where you caught one. And it'll be fine. It'll figure it out.

Jessica Hunt: Yes! their fur is incredible but their reproductive rate means we didn’t put a dent in the population when fur trading was a thing.

Changes to the climate are helping them expand, rather than reduce their range.

So, I’m starting to think that their appearance, which we generally just find unappealing, is absolutely the point. They don’t need to be cute to survive and thrive right alongside us!

Nate Hegyi: Right! And we’re projecting our own cuteness on them. I’m sure other opossums are thinking that’s a cute opossum. And they’re just amazing animals.

Jessica Hunt: So one more factoid before we go - because I said that they faint at the slightest sign of danger, but that’s not really true. You heard that one hiss at me, and the truth is that - before they faint - they can be pretty damn scrappy, no matter the size.

Danielle Drabeck: the little ones, of course, they're adorable, but they're also like. They'll really kill you or they’ll try their best. It does not matter that you are 7000 times their size. They're just like, I'm going to go for it. they hiss, they bite. They poop and throw their poop. They have anal gland secretions. They they're. Fierce. Fierce.

Nate Hegyi: They throw their poop?

Jessica Hunt: Apparently.

Nate Hegyi: How do they do that - with their tail?

Jessica Hunt: This is not called Holy Scat for nothing!

CREDITS