Oh, it's the smell of the tent that you haven't used in two years, and it's got a little bit of mildew with but it's comforting Ali Ward and back with an episode of Ologies. I don't even want to intro I don't want to even be talking right now. I just want you to hear the interview. I want you to hear all about the majesty of the world's most beloved rat faced trash goblin cottlebugs who lug around skin sex full of infants. So here's the briefest of introductions. Okay.
Theologists got their PhD studying members of the genus Didelphus, most specifically the Virginia possum opossum, north America's only native marsupial, the only one in North America. They got their bachelors in biology from Boden College, a master's and a PhD from the University of Michigan. They're also studying stem education and how college professors can make learning easier during a freaking pandemic. They're so passionate about psychom and education and
possums or possums. We get into it, but first we're gonna thank everyone at patreon dot com slash ologies for submitting such intensely perfect questions for this episode and for supporting the podcast since before we were even a podcast. Thanks to everyone who leaves reviews and rates the show, like this squirming Hairless Pink review just days old, left by Swinging Pro, who wrote in this podcast is just a bunch of dorks getting stupidly excited about learning, and
I love it so much. Oh swing Pro, you had me there for a sec, but you're one of us.
We love you back.
If you left her review this week, I read it straight up, so thank you. And congrats to Brandy Blonde and Tiger twenty forty for your science student journeys. I read those. Okay, let's put some fuzzy munchkins in your hearts. Let's get into it. I heard of this ologious work this past Friday. I DMed her the all caps message, will you talk to me about possums? What is your schedule?
Like?
I'm excited, Doctor Walsh. Shameless begging and a quick response.
We chatted just this past Saturday morning all about this not at all rodent creature and their general vibe dramatic death throws from tails to teeth to tiny hands and numbered nipples, orphaned babies, pet possibilities, the best possum chokes, the worst ones, rabies, tick, vacuums, myths, flim flam, the rise of the memes, and more with nationally recognized mimmologist, biology educator, environmental scientist, researcher, and acclaimed opossmologist doctor Lisa Walsh.
Oh let's do it, doctor Walsh.
Can you hear me?
Yes?
I can?
Yes?
Oh my gosh, so excited to talk about possums. You have no idea. Maybe you do have an idea because you're as scientist, so everyone's excited to talk possums. But I'm very excited. That's great. I had dreams all night about this podcast, and I was that I had so many questions from listeners that I couldn't sort through them.
All, which oh oh wow, Well, I mean dreams all night. That fits with a nocturnal animal.
I already love her.
Oh.
First thing I'll have you too, is if you could say your first and last name in your pronouns.
Sure, I am Lisa Walsh. Pronouns she her hers perfect?
And okay, help me figure out what ology this is? Would it be de Dell Main morphology. No, possibly.
I guess it depends on how scientific you want it to be, and like how narrow do you want it to be, because it could be like metatherology for all marsupials, didelpha morphology, or this morning, my husband suggested apossmology, and I think that that rolls off the tongue better than the more scientific, the more scientific names.
You know. I did look around and I did see that more people were using possmology than Didell for morepheology, So it might be that. But the first question is oh possum versus possum least set the record straight or so confused?
I know. I don't know if Americans decided that using the o sounded hokey or you know, back when there was more anti Irish sentiment, they just didn't want they didn't want to say, oh, possum. But it comes from an American Indian Algonquin word a passem, where it means white animal. And John Smith, being the colonizer that he was, just decided to steal the name and anglicize it. And this was actually the first marsupial that Europeans had encountered.
I've read that the Spanish actually came across in a possum with Christopher Columbus and they brought it back to Spain and they're like, oh my gosh, she's carrying her young in the pouch. And eventually the British stole the name from the American Indians and called it opossum. And then when another group of colonizers came across more marsupials in Australia, they said, well, these look very similar, they have similar traits, they also live in trees. Let's call
them by the same name. And at some point they decided we are going to confuse people, so let's call them possum instead of opossum. But I think that ended up confusing people more.
Okay, that makes so much sense. And how did marsupials get to North America.
They have a very long and confusing evolutionary history. They've been popping up all over. That's because they've been around for over two hundred million years.
Woh my god, yeah, two hundred million years.
So you know this goes back to how well do you know your continents and the history of continents, So Pangaea to Laurasia and Gondwana. And I am not a paleontologist. So I'm not great at it, but I don't know if I should be admitting that. But we we actually think that they evolved and emerged first in land that was to become North America in Europe, and at some point North America and South America were together, and the
group that would survive made it to South America. The group once the continents separated that were in North America and Europe died out, and the South American group wandered through what's to become Antarctica, made it to Australasia and really just exploded. They did great there. The ones that were stuck in South America, they were okay, there's a
few groups that are there. But then about two million years ago, the two American continents came back together and there was a land bridge, and so that's how they made it into North America. But it's funny you read the history of this American interchange. They call it where a bunch of different groups of North American animals went south. South American animals went north. So Armadilla went north, great Slots went north, and the possum was like, you know,
I'm just gonna wait, I'm gonna wait. I'm gonna wait. So we don't think they were one of the last animals to arrive in North America actually during that interchange. So they were just taking their their sweet time. Oh, which you know, I can appreciate.
It's what they do, right. They're not very fast critters from what I understand.
They're not. But man, when they want a book it they can. You do not expect them to move fast. So when they do it, maybe it seems a lot faster than it is. I've seen a manateee book it same thing. You're like, really, yeah, you're supposed to be slow, so when they move fast, it's still relative. But it's just so surprising.
I needed footage of this, and I needed it bad so down the apostlem hole, I merrily fell watching videos of these ash colored fuzz loaves just loping about sports fields and trail cams. Look, what is that strange animal running across the lawn? Why? It's an opossum. And yes, they can scurry with the best of them, topping out at four miles an hour, which you think sounds slow, but that's a fifteen minute mile and Michael Phelps can
only swim six miles per hour. Manatees, when they want to get the fuck away from you, they can jet twenty miles an hour. That's more than three times faster than an Olympic gold medalist. So next time you get on the freeway you hit twenty mph, just think of amanate drag racing you and winning a giant underwater yam with a beaver tail, leaving you in the dust.
But you're like, oh my gosh, that was actually really.
Fast, And now what about you and your evolution and migration? How did you come to be a very in my mind, celebrated opossum recon.
I started my undergraduate career convinced I was going to be a marine biologist, and I was doing research on this single celled organism, a dinoflagelet that lives symbiotically inside coral. The problem is they have not one but two cell walls, and so if you're trying to do anything in terms of genetics, just to get at the DNA, it took me about two months to figure out how to shear open their cell walls and get at their DNA. And I was just so frustrated sitting in the lab looking
at the Cayagen DN easy kit. That's what it's called. It's called d N Easy. I was like, this is anything but easy. I was reading the manual and they said, you know you want this many grams if it's a mousetail, you want this many grams. If it's mouth blood, I guess it would be leaders, this many miller leaders if it's mouth blood. And I was just like, mice, mammals, those sound so much easier to ask questions about, first of all, because you can see them. So the dinoflagelet,
we didn't even know how they reproduced. So I was like, I can make a bunch of guesses, but if you don't even know the natural history, you can't. I guess I couldn't ask the questions I wanted to at the time. So I found a wonderful advisor at the University of Michigan, Priscilla Tucker. She works on mice. I was like, oh, mice, great. She said, well, what do you want to research? I said, well,
I really want to just ask questions about. I guess in my mind, I was like, oh, beavers, they went through this huge population die off because we were hunting them too much. I guess trapping them too much.
So her advisor, Doctor Tucker, said, you gotta talk to this mimmalogist Phil Myers. Oh, he's got all the steamy, hot goss on just a bunch of critters that are not microscopic.
And he said, you know, the opossum is doing some weird stuff. It is. It's just keep it keeps trekking further and further north. And we don't know genetically what that range expansion north looks like. And so I said, okay, I will look at that for my master's which translates into collecting a bunch of roadkill over an entire summer.
I love this woman.
Because I so I tried trapping a possums, which is how I know how fast they are because the only the only possum I managed to trap just he was a little guy. He had probably just left mom uh, and he just booked it as soon as he got out of the trap. He was like the fastest little apossum torpedo you've ever seen. And I mostly caught raccoons and I was.
Like, oh my gosh, it's so funny to think of by catch.
Yeah, oh, it was mostly bycatch. I was terrified of catching as skunk. I luckily never did, and I said, you know, I don't think I'm not going to get enough of a sample of a possums if I'm just doing this, And I said, you know, you know it's easy to get roadkill. So I drove around Ohio and Michigan all that summer picking up roadkill.
Did you pick up the whole meat pancake or did you just take a vial of what you needed?
So there are people who do that, and I have done that, but I was mostly just looking for their ears. It's really nice, fleshy and it's easy to get as long as a scavenger hasn't run off with the skull and they've done that, they will take the entire head. And so if there was no head, I would try digging up other stuff. But luckily I was not taking the whole thing. My car would have been very fragrant if I had.
Yeah, did you ever get stopped or questioned at all while you were snipping ears off of roadkill?
That's a great question. I noticed this interesting dynamic, which I think I would do the same if I saw a strange woman parking her car and walking to this dead thing. Women would just stand inside their house and watch me mm hmm, like okay, I'm going to monitor her, make sure she's not do anything on my property. But the men would stop behind me, stop their car, say are you okay? Can I get you anything? And I was like, I'm wearing a fluorescent vest with bright blue
lab gloves. I'm good at. My favorite story is there was this man who had clearly just finished his workday at a garage, so he was full in a mechanic suit, and I think he was like, oh my gosh, it is a woman in distress. I have been waiting for this. And he's like, can I help you? And I was like I and this possum was literally on the double yellow line. It was smack in the middle of the road.
It was oh good.
It was a slow country road, and I was just like, I know. He offered to like carry it, and I was like, I'm trying to scrape it off the road so that I'm not sampling it in the road. I don't want to become double roadkill, which was the really interesting thing driving around. So if you start looking for roadkill, you will find it. And there were a lot of double road kills with possums because they actually I mean
as scavengers, they will go eat the roadkill. So I found a possums with porcupines up in northern Michigan, and I found them multiple times with raccoons, which is really a who's eating who questions?
Yes, that was my next question is who? Yeah, I mean at least they died doing what they loved, but yeah, who was scavenging who? That's a great question. That's like anyone out there needs to get a PhD in roadkill. Just an aside, I do have a future episode lined up about RhoD ecology and I will ask this very important question. Also, what did doctor Walsh find from all the sampling? Why are these sweet backyard beasts lumbering toward
the northern territories? What she says, the first thing you do with population genetics is try to figure out how many populations are there and who belongs to which we are the western Great Lakes there were two distinct opossum populations, a lower Michigan and Ohio posse and a Wisconsin an Upper Michigan one which I'm sorry, Upper Michigan. How are you not your own state? You're a disembodied land mass who skirted in as Michigan's plus one. I'm always confused
by you, but you're beautiful anyway. Some interesting crossovers in these two groups.
But why And when I spoke to a fur trapper in I believe he was in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, he said, you know, a little while ago, we had a really bad drought and we had to have hay bales brought in from elsewhere in Michigan, and apossums will occasionally den in I guess loose hay bales, and he thought that they they got transferred from one part of Michigan to another.
Because of this. So that's a good theory if.
You search for it online. I believe there is a picture of an apossum stuck in a.
I would let them sleep in my linen closet. I love them so much. They're so cute, they're so wonderful.
They would really like your linen closet.
I feel like they would love it, and so they will sometimes hitch rides.
Perhaps, yeah, sometimes hitch rids. What I looked at then was you can look at how diverse the populations are using the genetics collected, and I compared it to winter climate data across the region I had sampled, and I also compared it to human density, so basically a measurement of how urban the area was and agricultural density, so how much farmland, how many farms were around. Older, bigger
populations will be more diverse. And what I found by proxy is that the older populations were where there was less days of snow on the ground. So it wasn't actually about temperature, it was about days of snow on the ground. So if you didn't know, Noah has that data, I did not know that until I set out to ask this question.
Just a side note, So NOAH is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It is not some rando named Noah. Although curiosity never really fails to get the better of me. And yes, I did go on LinkedIn to type in Noah plus Noah in the search bar, and there are so many Noah's working at Noah and that pleases me anyway. Possums don't like ground snow? Why such divas.
Just like you or I, They wouldn't want to go walking outside in deep snow because essentially their paws are like our feet, so we I'm sure there are some people out there who do that. But I would not want to walk barefoot on the snow.
Their paws are so cute and pink and fleshy. And actually, let's start with the pink adoor. Yes, what Okay, they got a long snowt and one million teeth? Is that correct? Scientifically?
They do have fifty teeth. Yeah, so they have a lot of teeth. So some people say that they have the most teeth in the mammal kingdom. That is, that is not true. There are others out there. I believe there's some armadillos aren't there with more teeth. I did the research a while ago, and then I forgot it.
She is correct. There are seventy four teeth in the mouth of the giant armadillo, the most of any mammal. But what about the animal with the most teeth on earth? A terrifying array exists of jagged shredding mouth knives numbering twenty five thousand. Who's got them? Who's got all those teeth?
Snails?
Just snails which are commonly eaten by apossums acting as your garden bouncer. And yes, apossums have fifty teeth, which is still roughly fifty percent more than are thirty two.
Yeah, they have a lot of teeth. The teeth allow them to eat whatever they want. Opossums really need a lot of calcium, and so the teeth help them with breaking down little mice, boons, bird bones so that they can get all the calcium that they need.
Why do they need so much calcium? Is it to make more teeth? It might be.
I don't know if we know the why. We do know what happens if they don't get enough calcium. So it hasn't been scientifically reported for wild apossums, but for some orphan depossums, if they're brought into this rehab center and they aren't fit a diet high enough in calcium, they develop metabolic bone disease, which is kind of like rickets for a possums, and then they become non releasable.
There's a really cute story, it's cute and sad at the same time from a wild life read rehab center where there was an orphan apossum and he loved grapes so much so as a generalist, they would they would be given basically a buffet to eat each day, but he would prioritize eating all the grapes, and then he wouldn't be eating enough protein when he was when he was little, and so he did end up developing metabolic bone disease. So I just I think it's so funny
that he loved grapes so much that he ate himself sick. Oh, but he was great, So he was deemed non releasable, and Steve theopassum became an education opossum. So that's all. I guess that's the that's the one silver lining if they do develop opossum rickets Steve was the.
Best freaking Steve. What kind of sense of smell do they have? What kind of eyesight do they have? Walk me through anatomy for anyone who has not gotten to be close to an apossum.
Yeah, their eyesight is not good. It's probably a big reason and why a lot of people who have encountered opossums they say the possum didn't really react to me, or they have a story about their dog running after the apossum and the apossum not being able to respond quick enough. So yeah, I mean, I've I saw an old grizzled guy just walking through my parents' backyard a few summers ago, and he just did not see me at all. But they have a really really good sense of smell.
Oh that's helpful probably for finding roadkill and eggs and bones.
Right, Yeah, they'll eat pretty much everything.
I know that they've been lauded as I think, as you've said, tick vacuums. How many ticks do they really eat?
There was a recent publication out where they looked at the stomach contents of wild apossums and they did not come across ticks. And so what that suggests is this older publication where they put larval ticks on captive apossums and saw how many had a full blood meal and fill off the apossum. They said, that's not necessarily the
best way to determine how many ticks and apossum eats. So, considering they eat everything, and that the researchers with the captive apossums did find evidence of ticks in the feces, they do eat ticks. They're not going out of their way to eat ticks like Steve went out of his way to eat grapes, at least at least right now,
there's no evidence of that. Okay, But I mean, there's so many great questions remaining on apossums that I'm hoping there is a future grad student out there who's going to really figure out exactly what impact apossums will have on tics and lime disease. So I think that's that's the next great research question with the possums.
I'm about to quit my life and just go back to school to study them. So who knows, maybe me. Do other species of opossums have the cute, tiny little round ears also.
Yeah, So the Virginia possum, the Delphis virginiana, is one of about six to eight di Delphis species, and they all look very similar, so much so that sometimes they get misidentified, especially in areas in Central America where they overlap. Unfortunately, sometimes the only way to really determine that is if you have their skull, So if you see a live animal, it's going to be pretty hard to determine what species.
X ray vision.
Yes, exactly.
And do those a little cute ears serve an evolutionary purpose?
I think it would help with with hearing, and it would help with thermal regulation. Most of their evolutionary history was in the neotropics, and so the bigger ears would help them dissipate heat faster. So that's why like jack rabbits in deserts, you're going to see those have huge ears, right, So similar thing, but wet, warm environment instead of a hot arid environment for the apossoms in the neotropics.
Yeah, that makes more sense. I think of them in colder climates, but yes, if they were in the neotropics and needed to cool off, that would make tons of sense. Is that similar as to why they have a big, pink naked rat tail.
So they are arboreal, meaning they spend a lot of time in trees and they use that tail for balance. So you see a lot of pictures with them wrapping it around trees or branches, and you know, you want something that's full of friction if you're ar boreal, and if that limb is covered in hair, the hair is just gonna slough off. There is actually hair on their tail, it's just very fine and hard to see unless you're right up on the tail.
Is it just like peach fuzz kind of or is it wiry?
It's like wiry peach fuzz that's hot, but it is more fine than the like beautiful hair that their body is covered in.
Oh, and there little cute claws and hands and feet those are also bare, so that they can scramble up trees.
Yeah, I mean same thing with our hands and feet. I mean, evolutionarily for a while, we were in the trees as well, So same thing. We want grips, so we want fingerprints that add to the grip that. That's kind of why you see I guess going back to the tail, why you see their tail is kind of scaly. It adds to the grip.
I looked into this, and apossums kind of have fingerprints. According to the nineteen sixty nine scientific paper titled Studies and Dermatoglyphs by doctor Sardul Singh, apossums have friction ridges and dermal grooves, and they're not the only marsupials who do so. Koala's fingerprints are similar enough to humans that the adages it could stump Australian detectives, but you're gonna have to wait until I do a ridgeology episode in
the future, which is a thing. Also, I don't know how much beer Australian detectives drink, but either way, marsupials got a hand it to.
Them, and like us, possums have an opposable toe.
Ooh yeah, so that's huge.
Yeah, you look in terms of evolution primates and opossums, trees.
We love them, love them. Gotta do some scrambling. Yeah, and okay, let's talk the baby makers. The nipples in a ring. How many babies can they fit in that patch? Do they eat the babies? What's going on? Oh?
Do they eat the babies?
I Tasmanian devils apparently eat a number of their own babies, just like gummy bears. Ummy, and so I don't know. Okay, I have appossums to do that.
Well, so that's I guess if we want to be really morbid. That is an evolutionary adaptation for marsupials where their gestation time is so short.
Thirteen days, thirteen days in the hopper and they're out emerging, pink and squirmy and the size of a bee after less than two weeks of gestation. I have had contact lenses in my body for longer. I've probably had me nuggets in my body for longer, let's be honest. But mama possum gets knocked up and less than a fortnight later, she's like hit the door squarey worms, gonna see you on the other side of my vagina.
It actually fits within her estress cycle, so basically your monthly cycle. It fits in, so she gets pregnant and has those babies within wow, the month or whatever her cycle is. And if it was not a good litter good in terms of number, or if she is really stressed and is not going to be able to eat the nutrients she needs to survive and also nurse her young, we think she can just stop the milk supply say okay, I want to do over, which would then be why
she would eat her young. Basically she can abort that litter and then start over.
Reproductive choice happens in nature all the time, and the odds are not always ever in their favor. Only one in ten opossums actually survive to reproductive age as things are pretty heated straight out of the gate and by gate once again, I mean a vagina. And how many nipples do opossums have?
Typically thirteen, but there have been reports from nine to seventeen?
Oh so many? Yeah? Is there usually one in the middle like a target, like a bullseye.
For a possums, it's like a horseshoe, So one's in the middle but at the top. But there are marci fules with pouches where it is like a circle of nipples and then one in the middle.
I just loved the idea that that's kind of like a disco dance circle where one person's just really having a spotlight, or that's like a seat of honor.
Nursing in the middle.
Yeah, how long are they nursing for? And are the nipples in the pouch?
The nipples are in the pouch for the Virginia possum, they will nurse. They have to be attached to mom for fifty days. So it it is a bit like a royal rumble to get to a teat looks good on drum because sometimes mom will have I've read up to twenty twenty two Joey's, but then she only has let's say she's the average, she only has thirteen teeth. So the first thirteen that make it and attach and
start nursing are the thirteen that will survive. And they will stay attached for fifty days and be fully weaned around one hundred days.
And then it's backtime.
It's backtime starting around fifty days. I think it's just an extension of her pouch. She's like, okay, come on, come on, guys, I'm mama bus.
I have so many questions from listeners, literally hundreds. Oh my gosh, yeah, I know ologites, don't fuck around. I will not make you answer them all, but we have sorted them into some categories. Can I do a lightning ground and we'll just see how many we can answer? Oh yes, Okay, Before we do, we're going to blast
some cash at worthy causes. Each episode we donate to a charity of the ologists choosing, and this week it's going to actually the Apossumsociety us dot org, which was formed by a group of concerned citizens interested in rescuing orphaned and injured apossums. They have a network of volunteers that rehabilitate possums for return to the environment. There's more
info at apossumsocietyus dot org. And then a second donation was made in doctor Lisa Walsh's name in memory of her dear youngest aunt passed away from polycystic kidney disease, which for more info on that, you can listen to the recent nephrologyp so do we talk about it? So we made a donation to Kidney Fund dot org in her memory. And Lisa's aunt was herself a lover of a possums, she told me and she once on a possum take a running jump onto a skunk, which is
a magical thing to have witnessed. So those donations were made possible by sponsors of the show. Okay, shout out to patron and wildlife rehabber Elizabeth A. Gantenbein and Australian possum volunteer Jess And the first question was all about wee little babies mentioned by a lot of patrons like Anna Gusman, who asked what do I do if I happen to find a pinky baby possum in my yard?
As well as first time question askers Demi Espinoza and Laura Mitten and wildlife enthusiast Denay Dejurnet as well as first time question asker Claire Baudreau wants to know what should you do if you find a baby possum on its own. It's happened to them a few times and it was wonderful, but they're not sure. Essentially, should we take it to an animal rehab center? Also, a ton of other people want to know, can you keep opossums's pets?
Okay, I will answer the first question. I guess it depends on how large the abandoned Joey is trying to think of the right animal size for it, but basically.
What about like an avocado, a canalope?
I think like, if it's the size, if it's the length of like a banana, it's it's good. It's on its own.
Now.
If it's the size of your hand, it's probably in need of being taken to a wildlife rehab center. If it is, yeah, about the size of an avocado. So if it is, if it doesn't have that long, lush hair that we're used to, if its eyes are closed, it definitely it needs to be placed in some sort of little blanket and brought to the rehab center because it is probably not able to fully keep itself warm like a normal warm blooded mammal.
Yet, Okay, so a banana or bigger, it's good to go. And one possum rescue site use the guidance as big as a mouse coller rehabber, a rat.
Let it be.
Those ones are kind of like an eighteen year old who's just moved to New York City. You just gotta cross your fingers hope for the best. Now, for those of us who have dreams of waking up and sharing a pillow with a sleepy a possum who loves us back, such as patrons Shane Schandra Mason, Julie Dupree, Sana di Costo Pinto, who wrote, there is one lady on YouTube who has a pet possum that she appears to have kidnapped. Is having a pet possum problematic and patron violent Badger
who asked, would you recommend possums as pets? How can we give them the beautiful life they deserve?
In terms of can you keep an apossum? If you want to keep it apossum, you should become a certified wildlife rehabilitation person and you will be taking care of possums like Steve where they are deemed non releasable. Sometimes this is because of metabolic bone disease. Sometimes this is because they imprint on humans and so it wouldn't be safe to release them. I'm conflicted about keeping them captive.
So for me, it's really if it is a non releasable animal, then it should go to someone who knows how to take care of it. As I pointed out, their diet is really complicated and you don't want to be making them more sick. And they will make a mess of your house because they want to nest, so that prehensile tail they will also use to wrap around newspaper or like a light blanket or anything that they can grab and bring to what they decide as they're den in your house. Also, I guess to be the
Debbie Downer. In the wild, they live about a year and a half, so you would probably have your possum for maybe four years. The longest ever recorded, I think is about eight years.
She says, a possum simply live fast and die young. Well, they live slowish, but can hall ass when they need to put they die young. And I know that we all wish that there was this idyllic island we could go to, filled with wild apossums who live forever and newsflesh. This heaven exists almost. Sapolo is a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. It boasts sand dunes and camping a pre Civil War plantation mansion. I do not want to tour, but a popular of apossums that has been
there for nearly ten thousand years without any predators. So apparently Sapolo Island opossums live twice as long as other opossums in nature, and they enjoy high fertility rates all the way into the ripe old age of four. But yes, leave them on the islands. And as much as we love the long faced, screamy bundles of hair and teeth, the idea of keeping one as a pet is perhaps one that should remain on Fantasy Island.
So I think they are best admired. But I think it would be really hard to have a captive opossum and fall in love with it and then lose it so quickly.
Yeah, understood. A few people. Alison my Sing, Vanessa Geira, and Abraham Livingston all ask questions that I did not know this was a thing. They want to know. Well, Allison wants to know. I'm obsessed. My question is why are they the greatest? Their immune to rattlesnake venom? Is this true? All three asked about their role in venom antidotes.
Yeah, so they are immune to rattlesnake venom. I know that there's a grad student at the University of Minnesota looking into it, so she would be a great follow up.
Okay, I look this up and shout out to venom researcher and now doctor Danielle Drabek, who writes on her website quote, members of the marsupial family Didelphidi are not only resistant to snake venom, but also attack and eat pit vipers with impunity, exhibiting no behavioral precautions while subduing these dangerous snakes. My research, she continues, has revealed that they have evolved a mammalian blood protein vWF von wildbrand factor which is resistant to coagulation disruption by these and
similar venoms. End quote. So they're superheroes just lurch around your garbage. So what does this mean? Are they going to take over the world? Well, they may help thousands of people who are bitten by snakes in remote regions every year who can't afford super expensive anti venom. And a team at San Jose State University in doctor Claire Komive's lab is also studying this stuff and looking into
synthesizing anti venom from opossum blood proteins. And I just want to high five their tiny pink witchy little fingers. The opossums, not the scientist tes Hebert wants to know, not a question. I just think it's important to bring up possum penis. Do they have weird dogs?
I mean, only if you think a bifurcated penis is weird. Touche Didelphi day. Their family is named to it. It's named for two lombs, so in marsupials, the genitalia is doubled, so to uteri. Two vaginas and a bifurcated p Yes.
Wow, there you go. I mean that makes sense. It's a tool for every job, you know.
Yeah, and what's weirder? For female apossums when they are ready to give birth, they don't want the two vaginas competing, so they form this pseudo vaginal canal that then closes back up. Another scientist on Twitter called it a space portal vagina where it just like it appears and then disappears.
Yes, just in case you thought they could not get weirder. Female apossums, which are called jill's and male's jacks, all have kloacas, which you may remember as the one hole to rule them all from birds and reptile spots. But yes, a jill's double vage grows a third shoot down which her tiny clawed baby's travel. They shed their weird baby talents. They find a nip and then and they don't nurse. They attach. Once the nipple is in a possa mouth,
it gets long, swells and sticks down their gullet. It's down their throat. It's like a feeding tube made of a swollen nip. Until they're old enough to just bounce and hitch rides, surfing on mama's spine. Speaking of hitches, there must be one to be such vessels of alien mystique. They must have drawbacks. Are they crawling with disease? Rabies? Maybe? Patrons?
Demi Espinoza, Anti c Frangi, Sydney Bowers, Jackie Widra, First time question asker Kate Diel, Harrissa Liel, Savannah McGuire, Diana Teeter, and wildlife rehabber Andrea Devlin asked us to address the rabies question. Brie Wilson and many other listeners said, I read somewhere that American opossums are immune to rabies? Is this true? And is that because of body temperature?
It is true? With an asterisk, and yes, it is because they have a lower body temperature, it's not easy for them to get raybies. Although there are about five to ten cases of apossums that have been found with rabies, most of them in this area of New York where they think the rabies has become aerosolized because of something with the water, like the way that their bodies of
water work. And so I think if you're in an area with aerosolized rabies, you have bigger things to worry about than a possum with rabies or so it's important to note if you see an aposum out in the daytime, it is not because they have rabies. They are nocturnal, but they do what they want. You know, if they are hungry, they're gonna go forage or I've seen moms
moving around from dead to den. Also, they do seem to be more active in the daytime during winter because that's when it's going to be warmest, that's when it's going to be most comfortable for them to get around. Maybe the snow's melted, or they're just impatient. They want to go eat because it's been a few days since they've eaten. They have a very slow metabolic rate. So if they skip a day of foraging, that would be
like not eating a mouse for them. And if the winter is really bad, if the condition is really bad, they they just stay inside. They stay inside their den and they wait it out and they hope for it to get better. They can lose up to forty percent of their body mass in the winter.
Oh my god. Yeah, those little skinny, good little guys, those scrawny little passa.
Yeah, so sad, extreme weight loss. They could write a book about it.
Biohacking, intermittent fasting, Yeah, they're on it.
Yeah.
Becky the sassy seagrass scientist had a great question. Wanted to know where do pouch babies poop? Is it real gross in there?
I believe that they are doing what they need to do in mom's pouch. But Mom, as long as she is healthy, she is going to be actively cleaning that pouch. There's also evidence from other marsupials. This is because Australian marsupials get so much more attention, both from the general public but also from scientists, because you know, if you're an Australian biologist, why wouldn't you research these marsupials. There's a lot of anti microbials in the pouch. The Tasmanian
Devil milk seems to be able to kill marsa. So there's a lot going on in terms of keeping these babies safe that we are really just now starting to scratch the surface at because in recent year the question has been microbiomes, and so people are starting to look at the microbiomes of pouches. So if a mom a possum comes in to a wildlife rehab center, they can basically gauge her health by seeing how clean her pouch is. The pouch is only going to be dirty if she's really not doing well.
Same with my house, let's be perfectly honest.
And again that goes back to if either the resources are really low or if she's not feeling well energetically, it is not worth her time to keep a litter going because she has to spend so much time and energy in terms of not only making the milk, but keeping that pouch clean and safe. Because all marsupials are born as neonates, they are very underdeveloped. They're not able to throw a regulate for themselves, so it's really up to mom to keep them safe and let them grow
inside her pouch. Although I want to point out about four percent of marsupials don't have pouches.
What, yeah, really, what's going on there?
So instead they just have these little flaps of skin and the young just hang off of mom. So they tend to be smaller species. Again, it's a it's an evolutionary question that is not really being looked at because, yeah, marsupials are just so understudied, at least in my opinion. I'm not biased at all, right.
Ah, of course not no.
But so I think, yeah, I think it has something to do with if you're into humidive an environment, you would become unable to regulate it and keep let's say, fungus from growing inside of it. So that's my completely naive hypothesis about why some of these species lost the pouch.
And now I want to look at pictures of them hanging off of a skin flap. It sounds gymnastic in a way.
Yeah, it just looks like little jellybeans are growing on her belly.
There's so many people who had questions about feigning their own death looking at you, Sarah mas Chris Brewers, Sonya Solomonson, m Case, Anthony Willis first time question asker Chandler Witherington, Sophie duncan Sebastian Pepinot, Brena Wing, and Janella Lindauer Starr wanted to know is there an easy way to tell
when apossum is dead versus just playing dead? And should you move them to a safe space if they're playing dead in a dangerous place, but deserve respiratory and heart rate decrease what's going on there.
In order to tell the difference. So this this was something I was nervous about when I first started collecting roadkill, because you know, if it was a really fresh, freshly dead pass im, how would I know? Most likely if they are dead. If they're freshly dead, like if you can't tell, there will probably be blood. Or the other way to tell is if they don't smell, then they
are dead. Really, if they have feigned death, most likely they have excreted their annal glands because they are trying to convince this predator that has been running after them a I'm no longer running, so I'm no longer prey. But also be look at how gross and stinky I am. You don't want to eat me?
Does it work?
I mean, it seems to work at least. We only really know about how well it works for dog attacks, and it tends to work right, especially because dogs just want to chase after things that are running and then
they're like, oh, you're not fun anymore. In terms of not working, it wouldn't work for birds of prey because they're not going to have a sense of smell and they are actually going after to possum too to eat it, and apparently younger possums are not as quick at faining death, so they would be grabbed by the bird of prey, which are the size possums that these birds would typically be going after anyway.
Okay, remember ninety percent of possums each shit and go to heaven before they even hit puberty. Their only defense mechanisms are scrambling up a fence, opening their mouths as if they would bite you but they typically don't, or dramatically freezing, drooling, and shitting themselves.
The issue is if you touch it, it will prolong how how long they stay dead, stay faining death. They are not actually rising from the dead when they recover from this, but brain activity, heart rate, it's not changing. So it's similar to fainting for us where you know, sometimes it'll take us a little bit to recover. Maybe possums take a little longer. I've seen a video where someone forced the possum to feign death. They and then they handled it. Please don't do that. Don't do that to wildlife.
They sound like just very good lesbians in a way. Yes, if they're able to convince people, can we talk a little bit about their screaming capabilities. We had a few people ask, such as Janello lindau Er, Alec Rundeman, Savannah Holloman, and for example, Nico Price wants to know if there are any cultures with awesome lore surrounding these adorable, drooling, hissing, screamy voice. Good name for them, but is there screaming? Are they hissing? Are they screaming?
It's typically hissing. The babies will have this high pitched squeak which is kind of heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking for me because I've only heard it from a road killed mom. So yeah, I guess if you ever come across a road killed a possum, check for babies and then bring the babies to your local wildlife rehaber.
What about lare.
I've tried to look for lare and I have not been able to really find much. So that's a great question. And if there are any listeners who know of some, I would I would love to hear about it. But mostly what I've heard is, you know the the jokes about how to cook opossums, and I don't want that cookbook. Thanks.
People always ask if you hear any jokes about a possums or if you make any jokes about a possums being in the field.
Mmm. I mostly make the joke that before I give a big presentation, if I'm really scared, I can just play possum and faint in front of the audience. Right, just channel my channel, my study species and faint. Maybe they would go away. But my stage freight has gotten a little better, so no more playing possum for me.
Is it a bittersweet at all to be called upon to publicly discuss your study species so much?
Do you enjoy talking about it?
I really do enjoy talking about it. I'm passionate about education, and so I think I'm very lucky to have worked on an animal that people recognize and that people want to talk to me about, and that has been gaining internet fame since I started. So I started my master's program in twenty twelve, and then the last few years of my PhD, they were starting to become memes, like popular memes that I would see online, and it was just it was really kind of surreal to see them
gain popularity as I moved forward in my studies. R J.
Deutsche actually was a listener who wrote in and said, not a real question, but like, why are they so cute and memeable? I wonder what the what know your meme has to say about the increasing popularity of possums of opossums.
Yeah, I think it helps that they're really resilient and they're around humans a lot. But they're they're nocturnal, so we don't see them a lot. So when we do see them, we take a picture of them and their defensive stance of you know, opening their mouth really wide and hissing. It is very compelling.
And the cutest part about all those pictures of a beetlejuice look and open mouthed to the monster is that they're just holding their jaws open, not to gnaw your hand until it's a stringy stump, but just to make you go, oh, I don't believe you're so ugly? So when did we see ourselves in this animal and begin to fall in love with them? On the internet? While I asked the website No Your Meme to dish some
chronology and they delivered. Turns out that in twenty eighteen, a Twitter account launched dedicated to possum memes called scram at own ass, and the rest is history. I followed it for years. It's also history, including that account, which seems defunct. It breaks my heart. I miss it so much because, just like the possum, all of us have at one point curled up defensively, unhinged our face and really just let our ass have it for no reason at all. Screaming at own ass is something I think
we all feel we could relate to exactly. That was one question we got, probably the most common question. We got so many patrons, so many but namely Rdar the Cat, Madison Graham's and A Guzman, Jenna A and Grace Robosho wanted to know, essentially, why are they so simultaneously ugly and cute and why can't more people appreciate them? Why do you think like Seguane DNA wants to know, why are they so ugly? It's so dark? Cute? That was
verbiage that so many listeners had. But yeah, how is it possible that they look like a giant rat but also a teddy bear?
Just luck of the draw in terms of where evolution led them. So I think that the biggest issue is their naked tail, which hopefully your listeners now know isn't actually naked, and the shape of their snout. So marsubules have narrow brain cases, and so it's this narrow but long snout. I think that makes them cute yet weird at the same time. And with the really big eyes and the big ears, you know, we equate those with things like teddy bears.
That's a very good point. Richard Swar and Lauren want to know, how do I make them be my best friend? Is that something? Probably wildlife rehabbers would say, just admire from Afar.
Yeah, I would say admire from afar. Set up a I think it's like a one hundred and ten dollars at Cabela's a trail cam. So if you really love a possums, and if you live in an area where you have any backyard set up a trail cam. So not everyone can do this, but otherwise, you know, start making memes for possums, set up a trail cam to
see who's stopping by your backyard. Yeah, don't. I don't recommend you know, setting out food to attract wildlife, because you're going to end up with wildlife that you don't want. Or you know, wildlife are carriers of diseases. Sometimes that doesn't mean that we should do anything bad to them, but we shouldn't be trying to attract them to where they could then spread it to us or domestic animals.
Also side note, you got horses, maybe don't let opossums shack up in your barn because they can be carriers of EPM, which is equine protozol milo encephalitis. So you don't want opossums to pooh near the horse's food or water. I mean, you never want an opossum to pooh near anyone's food or water because it's pooh. But definitely you don't want it if you have horses.
So if you want to be their best friend, honestly, the best way would be to find a wildlife rehab center and see if you can volunteer there. They always need more hands, especially in the spring when all the orphaned babies are brought in. No.
Yeah, that's a great idea. I think I just found my new volunteer gig. Oh yeah, Matt Thompson is curious if you've seen the Majesty of the Possum Lady. This may be the.
Most important video you will ever see.
Are you concerned about the mental health of your apossum?
Well you should be, Jet Spelvin, I think yes. Any thoughts do you want to be friends with her?
Do you approve?
Do you disapprove?
I'm all about being weird and being weird with possums, and if her mystique is helping to propel a possums to their popularity.
Awesome, awesome possum.
Awesome possum.
Ugh look her up and fall down a wormhole into a universe where a perfectly quaffed older woman who looks like Audrey Hepburn stands in a poorly lit apartment just thump in the boncos to her rescue possums. Oh it's wonderful. She also very wisely delivers the psa that possums belong in the wild unless they are of the Steve variety. So she knows what's up. I would like to be her. Any documentaries or movies get it really right or really wrong?
Hmm, that is a good question. I do want to say. I guess I love Parks and Rec and they got it right in that there would be possums sometimes on golf courses and they would be out in the daytime, and unfortunately they are often vilified because we think that they are going after our pets. That would be rare, and any animal that is attacked will defend itself. So I don't know if the possum and Parks and Rec actually bit the Mayor's dog.
Am I sure the possum we caught is Fairway Frank, Yes, Am, I quite sure.
No, So I don't think so that's the one that comes to mind in terms of possums in the media. Fairway, Frank. Sorry, I just remember Fairway Frank. Just yes, I just remembered what.
Sucks the most about possums? What sucks the most about your work with possums? Feel free to get negative. It can be anything.
I mean, so, possums are nomadic and they're solitary, and so trying to ask genetic questions doesn't always work because they're not like picking a habitat and staying where. They're not staying in one place. They're moving around a lot. So the last chapter of my dissertation was like, what does the genetics of the possum look like across temperate North America? Oh? It's a mess. It's a mess. So
not a great animal to do that research on. I mean, it's interesting because they're such a mess, but it's also bittersweet because there are so many questions that are still unanswered about a possums. I hope that chats like this can can spark curiosity in the next a possum scientist.
What about the thing? Last question? I always ask, what about the thing that you love the most about apossums?
Oh? That that's such a hard question. I can't So I already told the story about Steve. I really, I really like that story. I think that the young apossums are just adorable, and I like that there was this fascination with a possums even like one hundred years ago. So are you out in California? We are?
Yeah?
Where?
Apparently we didn't have apossums here until eighteen ninety three. Great, so we brought him over.
Yeah, yeah, I love that people from Tennessee were like, we're moving out west, Honey, I'm gonna miss Tennessee. Let's bring some possums. Yeah. And then at one point, so this might have been a different event, but people raising them for in California, they didn't build the pen well enough and the possums broke free. So I love the
relationship between humans and apossums. Sometimes it's not good, yeah, sometimes they're vilified, But when they're appreciated or when they one up the person who was trying to keep them in a pen, I really like those stories.
I've as a champion for possums. I think celebrating their victories is absolutely worthwhile in human nature. Yeah, so ask smart people bumbling questions and celebrate the victory of others. Now you can hear more about doctor Lisa Walsh's work on Twitter. She is at Spouts of Facts and it'll be linked in the show notes, alongside links to the charities and the sponsors and tons more at aliwar dot com,
slash ologies, slash Opossumology. We are friendable on Twitter at ologies or at ali ward with one l same handles on Instagram and please trust that our feeds will be flooded with possum memes all week long. It's a torrent of them. Oh I'm excited. Thank you Aaron Talbert for adminting the Ologies podcast Facebook group. Hello to all the redditors on the Ology suborddday. Ologi'es merch is available at ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you Shannon Feldts, Bonny Dutch, and
Susan Hale for helping manage that. Thank you Susan and Noel Dilworth for helping behind the scenes with ologies biz. Thank you Emily White of the transcription service The Wordery for turning around transcripts so fast. Available for free on my website to anyone who could need them or use them. Thank you to Caleb Patten for all the bleeping. Thank you to Kelly Dwyer for a website design. She's available if you need her. She is linked in the show notes.
Thanks to Stephen Ray Morris and Zegrodriguez Thomas for working on Smologies. More episodes coming soon, And of course the human critter who fits all the pieces together, Jared Sleeper for me get these up on time every week despite juggling a lot lately. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music and he is in a very good band called Islands. If you stick around until the end, you know that I burden and divulge a secret this week. The secret
is that I shot my shot. I reached out to the office of mister doctor Fauci, and he is considering an appearance sonologies. I'm very nervous. I just immediately began sweating, telling you that across your little possum fingers. Everyone, we'll see what happens. Also, I farted while recording the interview, and I really hope the guest didn't here, and I
had to ask dear to cut it out. Okay, we're bye, Hackadermatology, homeology, rypdo zoology, lithologynology, meteorology, pathology, napology, seriologyology.
Oh, possum, this is not like he's Irish.