Animal · United States, Canada, Mexico
Virginia opossum
Didelphis virginiana — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The Virginia opossum is the only marsupial living wild north of Mexico, which makes it North America's one and only pouched animal. The long bare tail makes it look at first like a big rat.
Picture credit: Lauren McLaurin (CC BY 4.0) · Drcyrus (CC BY-SA 2.1 au) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the Virginia opossum live?
Home: Woods, farmland and towns from Canada to Costa Rica.
In the wild it lives in these countries: the United States, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: 33–55 cm long. It weighs about 2.3 kilograms. On the menu: both plants and meat.
The story behind it
Everyone knows that an opossum plays dead. Almost everyone gets one thing wrong about it: the animal is not acting. Cornered and terrified, it collapses into a state it cannot switch off. It lies on its side, limp, mouth and eyes open, tongue hanging out, feet clenched. Its heart rate falls by half and its breathing becomes so shallow that it is hard to detect at all. At the same time it releases a green fluid with a rotten smell, so it does not only look dead, it smells dead — and a predator that hunts live prey loses interest. The state stops only when the danger goes away, and it can last for hours. That is also why it goes so badly on a road: a car is not a predator, and lying still in front of one is the worst possible answer.
Find it on the globe
Virginia opossum is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Is the opossum pretending?
No. It is an involuntary state, closer to fainting than to acting. The animal cannot decide to start it and cannot decide to stop it — it ends when the danger goes away.
Is an opossum a rodent?
No, although the long bare tail makes it look like a big rat. It is a marsupial and carries its young in a pouch — the only one living wild north of Mexico.
Why do so many opossums die on roads?
Because their best defence is the wrong one here. Faced with a car they freeze instead of running, and a car — unlike a fox — does not lose interest in something that looks dead.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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