You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. Guess what gave?
What's that mango?
Do you know that? And apossum and apossum are two completely different animals.
That didn't even sound like two different words.
I know, I actually thought that as I said it, But for a long time I thought it was the same animal. It was just like a regional dialect difference. Like depending on where you live, a groundhog is also called a ground pig, or a marmot, or a woodchuck or even a land.
Beaver land beaver. I don't know about some of those, Like how much wood does a ground pig chuck? That it doesn't have the same ring to it now?
Yeah, you know, like trying to determine how much more winter there is based on whether land beaver saw its own shadow, right, Like, some words just work better than others, even if it's the same animal. But back to possums and opossums, it turns out they are different words with different pronunciations, and they refer to two totally different animals.
Okay, And which one is it that keeps knocking over my trash cans? Because you know, I want to address them properly, you know, when I yell out the window at them tonight.
Yeah, So that would be a possums. And those are the ones that you and I are familiar with, right, like those stumpy little mammals with grayish fur rat like tails and pointy white faces that you sometimes see rooting through your garbage. And apossums are native to the America's and they actually got their name from Captain John Smith, the English soldier who helped establish the Jamestown colony in Virginia.
Wow, so John Smith named the apossum. I don't think that that was in my elementary.
School history books mine either, But in sixteen oh eight, Smith wrote the first known English description of the creature, and he explained that the local tribes called it an apossum, which was his own phonetic approximation of this Algonquin word meaning white animal.
And so what about possums, like, where do they live?
Apparently they live in Australia, But surprise, surprise, their name also ties back to European exploration. So more than a century after John Smith encountered a possums in the forests of Virginia, a totally different group of British explorers made their way to Australia and also to New Guinea, and one of them was this naturalist. His name was Sir Joseph Banks, and during his travels he came across an
animal that resembled the descriptions of American apossums. You know, it wasn't a perfect match, right, Like the ones in Australia were smaller, they had less pointed snouts. They also had big furry tales with no white on their faces. So Banks just kind of adjusted the name just a little bit, like ever so slightly and called them possums.
That is so bizarre, Like, let's keep most of the name, but we'll just we'll just tweak it a little bit so that, you know, Will and Gabe and Mango can clarify the differences between the animals on a podcast two hundred and fifty years later.
I know, it really is impressive and I feel honored that Sir Joseph Banks teed it up for us to educate the world two hundred and fifty years later. But the strange thing is that they are in fact related, Like you know, they are very distant branches of the
same family tree. That said Australian possums are actually much more closely related to kangaroos than they are to a possums, And on today's episode, we're actually shining a light purely on a possums because these little neighbors of ours are full of weird surprises and we found nine incredible facts about them, so let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to part time genius. I am Monga's articular aka Mango,
and Will cannot be here today. We miss you will, but stepping in to replace them is my good friend, researcher for the show, writer for the show, all around personality for the show gave Lucy a Hey gave Hi Mango. And on the other side of that soundproof glass hanging upside down from a pull up bar, that is our
friend and producer Dylan Fagan. And I should note that Dylan hasn't actually done a pull up yet, so I'm guessing this is some kind of tribute to the way that apossums hang upside down from their tails, right GiB.
Yeah, they have those prehensile tails that let them hold on to things, typically tree branches, not pull up bars. But it's really only the baby apossums that hang from their tails like that. Adult males can weigh up to fourteen pounds, so you know, their little tails wouldn't support them for very long. So come to think of it, maybe they should be doing pull ups.
That is so weird. I feel like we've been lied to by balds cartanists.
Yeah no, sorry to disappoint. Adultapossums mostly use their tails to stay balanced, to grip onto tree branches and carry nesting materials. And while Australian possums also have big, fuzzy, prehensile tails, they don't hang upside down at all, even as babies.
You think you know a guy, right, So, Gabe, where do you want to start today?
Why don't we talk about one fact that I sometimes forget, which is that a possums are not rodents. Instead, they belong to that special class of mammal where the female carries and nurses her young in an external pouch on her abdomen. You know who I'm talking about, marsupials.
You know. I always felt like we were cheated as kids because it felt like America didn't have its own marsupial right, like they were all in Australia. Or whatever else. But but like it is really cool that we actually have one.
Yeah, I know, yeah, it feels like when you learn about marsupials in grade school. Australia really does have the monopoly on all the cool critters koalas, wombats, kangaroos, a whole bunch of others I can't remember. And you know, apossums are kind of this weird outlier because you know, they aren't over there. They are actually more than one hundred different species of them spread across South and Central America.
And they've been there for a long time too. Because apossums are basically living fossils, they coexisted with the dinosaurs and they've changed very little in all that time. I know, again, you think you know a guy. But here in North America we have a species of our own, and that's the Virginia apossum.
So why does North America have just one species.
Because so far that's the only species, the only marsupial that has managed to north of Mexico on its own. The Virginia possum is technically a tropical species, just like its southern cousins, but for whatever reason, these little guys have pushed further and further north over the last few centuries.
They were already well established in the southeastern US by the seventeenth century, as John Smith showed, and today Virginia possums are found as far north as New England, the Upper Midwest, and even parts of Canada.
So I love that tenacity, and it also feels very on brand for America's marsupial.
No, yeah, very much. They get around. And also Virginia possums are scrappy and not very particular. They'll make a den just about anywhere, in trees and burrows or even in abandoned buildings, and they'll eat just about anything plants, insects, kitchen trash. That adaptability is allowed the species, you know, to go places where a marsupial really doesn't belong.
I am curious, like, where don't they belong?
I mean pretty much anywhere with harsh winters, right, because again, these are tropical mammals. They really aren't built for cold temperatures like raccoons or foxes. A possum fur is thin and sparse, and their tails and ears are completely hairless, which you know, we find kind of gross. You know, if you ever see an apossum in the springtime with a stumpy tail. Cut him some slack because he just survived a rough winter and he has the frostbite scars to prove it.
Well. Hopefully my next fact can drum up even more goodwill for the Virginia apostlem because it's my absolute favorite. Did you know that apossums have thirteen nipples?
That is news to me?
I should think you might be, Ah, you might know that.
I'm not gonna admit it in public.
But this is the one thing I like absolutely remember from mental floss. And also I remember that all those nipples are arranged in a circle.
Oh, that is so weird.
Why I do want to get to the why. But they also have more teeth than any other land mammal in North America, which is why those brilliant smiles of theirs are, you know, so spectacular and also scary. They have fifty teeth all stuffed into a really small mouth, and that's eight more teeth than wolves actually have.
Wow.
But I'm going to move off teeth back to nipples. How many animals have you heard of with an odd number of nipples? Zero?
But I'm sure it makes wearing a bikini trickier, right, and where would you even keep a spare nipple? Like, they're all just arranged in a circle, you said, even the thirteenth.
One, well, twelve are laid out in a circular pattern, kind of like the numbers on a clock, and the thirteenth is actually in the center, which is obviously a very strange arrangement. But also the only reason the circle arrangement works is because of that external pouch, you know, the one that holds those infants all snugly in place
even when their mom is on the move. Basically, the thirteen newborn apossums, which are only about the size of honeybees, wedge into that pouch and latch on from all the directions.
I mean, you gotta admire the efficiency, right.
Yeah, but it does have a downside. So unlike baby placental mammals, which can move around independently between feedings, apossums basically remain attached to their mothers for several weeks until they're old enough to wean. So even though they have litters of twenty or thirty Joey's at a time, and I think it's cool that they're called Joey's as well, the most that can ever survive? Are those lucky thirteen? Oh?
That? I mean, that's that's pretty sad when you think about it.
Yeah, it is sad. But to make up for it, I'm going to give you a vocab gift, which is, you know, how we show our love on the show. Apparently a group of living, thriving young apossums is called a passel.
A passel of apossums. I like that. But since you raise this, you know, very grim specter of apossum death, I think now seems like a good time to talk about the species knack for pretending to be dead. We've all heard the expression playing possum, which refers to someone feigning death in order to trick an opponent, and I guess in this case it should actually be called playing apossum. But here's the thing. Apossums aren't trying to deceive anybody
because they can't actually choose when they play dead. It's a completely involuntary response called thanatosis or tonic immobility, and it's basically their body's last ditch effort to avoid being eaten.
I like that you're clearing up the fact that they're actually very honest creatures and they're not going to trick anyone, but work exactly because you know, you think a better strategy would be to like just fight or race away, you know, pretty much anything but going limp right.
Well, I mean it works in the apossum's case because many of its natural predators, like hawks and snakes, prefer to feed on live prey, and they tend to lose interest when one of their targets, you know, suddenly keels over with its tongue hanging out, and when dealing with bread who don't mind a bit of scavenging, like foxes, the apossum goes a step further to repel them. It actually voids its bowels and excretes a foul smelling mucus so that other animals will think it's gone rancid.
I discuss that is so gross and so clever.
I guess right, yeah, I mean, it's definitely an effective defense system, you know, whether the apossum knows it or not. But it's also kind of risky. For instance, an a possum's catatonic state can last up to four hours, which is, you know, more than enough time for a less picky predator to find them. Not to mention there are lots of unlucky ones that play dead in the middle of the road, and the odds of them waking up before
a car comes along or slimmed to none. And that's a big reason why Virginia apossums only live about two years in the wild on average versus ten years in captivity.
Yeah. I mean, it is sad to think about, but I bet a lot of people are mostly familiar with the possums as roadkill, right, Dylan, Actually, before this episode, pitch me on making a PTG bumper sticker that says true patriots break for America's only native marsupial. I didn't know what he was talking about before, but now I feel like I would slap that sticker on my car for sure.
Yeah, and that reminds me. Have you heard the old Southern joke about planked possum aka possum treat? I mean, I'm from Delaware, so no, Yeah, fair enough, So that's a no.
Okay.
So this joke is basically, you know, plays on the idea that a possum meat isn't that tasty to most people. MU probably relate, And it's basically this long winded recipe about how to roast an apossum on a wooden board. So it goes through all these detailed steps like how to make a special glaze and how to parboil this like hyper specific yam from East Texas. You gotta get
that yam. And then the last step, you know, which is also the punchline, is that you throw out the apossum and eat the board instead.
Oh, the whole switch through. I got it. Whatever apossum's lack and tastiness, they more than makeup for in other ways. For instance, did you know that they have secret powers of immunity or that one of them was pretty enough to be issued an official pardon by a North Carolina governor. We're going to be talking about both of those after a quick break, so don't go anywhere.
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're talking about nine reasons why apossums are more awesome than you think. We've got five facts left to go, But if you dig the show so far, help us out and subscribe on your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a
fellow animal lover. We also love hearing from you, so let us know if you have a question or idea like us to look into you can give us a call at three oh two four oh five five nine two five, email us at high Geniuses at gmail dot com, or come find us on blue Sky and Instagram at part time Genius.
I mean, there are a million ways to get in touch, so it feels like people have no excuses, right, I know, just.
Pick your favorite and uh yeah reach out all right and I goo, let's go back to your teas. Before the break, you said a possums have some crazy kind of immunity. So what are we talking here? Diplomatic tribal?
What do they got? So what I was talking about actually is this incredible adaptive immunity that makes the possums kind of unaffected by animal venom. There is a special protein in their blood that completely neutralizes toxic components, and it allows an a possum to survive a bite or a sting that might otherwise kill an animal its size.
The trait is especially useful when squaring off against dangerous snakes like copper heads and water moccasins, but it is also handy for warding off the venomous stings of things like honeybees or scorpions.
That is a much cooler trick than like pretending to be dead.
And oozing goo.
Yeah, completely, But how did they become immune to venom What was it? Because they were, you know, attacked all the time by venomous snakes or something.
I mean, that definitely is one theory, but researchers aren't completely sure. Somethink that possums immunity is actually more about offense than defense, and in that scenario, they would have evolved immunity for the sake of expanding their diet. Right, So, despite what you might think of possums, you know, they're scavengers, but they also eat a lot of rattle snakes, honey bees, scorpions, so it kind of makes sense.
Yeah, And I mean that definitely works in our favor too, right, Like always nice to have fewer rattle snakes and scorpions prowling around the neighborhood.
Yeah, And possums are a big help with things like population control, not just with venomous species. They're also great for like clearing out past like garden slugs or cockroaches ticks. They help beautified landscape by eating things like rotten fruit. They're essentially living vacuum cleaners for cities and suburbs and they really will just hoover up just about anything.
Didn't you write a poem about or two in apossum a few years back, like some kind of owed to the apostlem, you remember, Yeah, it was for a show I did called Humans Growing Stuff.
And this was way back in COVID lockdown. It was like three am in Brooklyn, and Lizzie and I heard this weird shuffling outside and we were like, is that a big cat or a person? There's a sound on this little balcony that's above our bedroom, right, so so like you could hear this like clomping around, and then it sort of quietly, not so quietly, came down these metal outdoor stairs, and so it kind of felt like
we were in this bad horror movie. And you know, we'd both been startled and we didn't know what it was. And it's three am, so I'm just kind of tracking the sounds, and then I peeked out the window with my light and I just saw this goofy looking like pretty big possum with all these pointy chompers, and I was definitely taken.
Aback, I bet, but Mango, there's no getting away from it.
The poem please, Yeah, so on the show, I presented this with hand drums, sort of beat poetry style. I think I called it poetry corner, but I just pulled up the text of this. So this poem is called quote an apology to the apossum in my garden who made me shriek today loudly at three am in the morning, And I'm gonna read it for you now. I'm sorry that when I saw you, I screamed and showed you away. But now that I know you feast on slugs, please help yourself to the buffet.
Thank you, beautiful, beautiful, I'm gonna snap so dumb, does your garden have a lot of slugs?
I mean when it rains like it actually has so many of them. I've never experienced anything like it. And I also never assumed, like of all places will be slug filled, but you end up with like beautiful birds coming through as a result, and I guess also possums. But before we move on, I want to mention one other possum trait that we should all be grateful for, and that is its low body temperature. So as marsupials, the possums run a little bit cooler than other mammals.
So while the normal body temperature for a human ranges between ninety seven and ninety nine degrees fahrenheit, and the possums can be as low as ninety four degrees fahrenheit.
And why is that something to be thankful for?
Apparently, the difference of a few degrees makes it much harder for an apossum to contract rabies, which you know, it's kind of remarkable. The virus just can't survive for that long and a body that cold, and that means it's extremely unlikely that you'll ever cross paths with an infected apossum. That said, if you do encounter a wild apossum, you should still keep your distance. You know, they aren't aggressive by nature, but they're safe than than sorry.
Yeah, yeah, a good reminder not to go out and hug an apossum, no matter how cuddly they look, even though you know you might want to. After I tell you about the apossum's trademark display of affection, which is something called slubbing. Have you heard of it?
I mean, I try to keep up on all the new apossum lego, but I've never heard of slubbing, So tell me about it.
Well, The word itself is short for slobber rubbing, and that pretty much tells you all you need to know. Opossums will lick an object or sometimes a person that they like, and then forcefully rub against it with their chin. If you ever see this in action, it is gross and funny and oddly charming. There are plenty of videos out there, but keep in mind you will come across titles like quote apossum can't stop slubbing his mom and just you know, go ahead and click through. It's not what you think.
So I'm both grateful for the link and for the warning, but I'm curious you said this was a show of affection. Sounds more like it's marking territory.
It's a bit of both, really wild. The possums might slub to mark their territory and leave behind their scent for potential mates, while the possums in captivity generally slub their favorite toys or caregivers. In either case, slobber rubbing is a way for a possums to claim something they like as theirs, and when you think about it, the behavior isn't that unusual. Cats do something very similar called bunting, which is when they rub their faces on things to
claim ownership and express affection. The apossum version just involves you know, way more saliva.
Well, speaking of ways to show affection, I want to circle back to this other story. It teast earlier and it's the one about the apossum who was pardoned by a governor. So this story starts back in nineteen seventy when a male apossum named Slowpoke won the Prettiest Possum Award at the National Hollerin Contest in Spivey's Corner, North Carolina.
What a sentence and prettiest possum I love that.
Yeah, well that's how the day starts. But the main event that day was the second annual Field holler In Contest, where local farmers competed to give the best yell or yodel. But back to the prettiest possum. So slow Poke just cruises to victory, right, just eases right in there, because you know, slow Poke, he is unusual. He's got this all white coat and it's impressive. He's got a fourteen
inch tail that is just too much to compete with. Right, he is a butte and as a prize, he and the other human contest winners get this private meet and greet with North Carolina's governor, Bob Scott.
Feels like slow Poke, you know, probably would have preferred a bag of crickets or something to a meet and greet, But okay.
You know, it also would have been a better idea to give him crickets because Bob Scott was an unapologetic possum eater. Now one of the other winners, the newly crowned possum Queen, Margaret and Wilkes, happened to mention that she had never tasted a possum. So the governor said he would remedy that by hosting a banquet for her at the executive mansion, with poor little slow Poke being served as the main course.
No, and everyone was okay with that, like serving up the prettiest possum on a plate.
No, not really so. For weeks after the plan had come out, people wrote angry letters to their local newspapers insisting that the Democratic governor call off his twisted dinner party. And the backlash wasn't just from private citizens and employed. The state Department of Conservation and Development also registered his disapproval, wrote, quote, Slowpoke has been subjected to such inanimal like treatment as being given a bath every other day in certified milk
and having his toenails polished. And I might add that unless Governor Scott comes up with a substitute meal, I fear our entire street will vote Republican in the next election. Wow. Anyway, after more than a month of public pressure, the governor finally holds this press event in Capitol Square. He announces that slow Poke would not be eaten and would instead receive a full, unconditional pardon.
So let me get this straight. Slow Poke's crime was winning a beauty contest, and he was pardoned from being eaten by the governor.
Yeah. But Governor Scott was quick to double down after the ceremony, telling reporters I shall not be thwarted in my appetite from bossalom. I just want to let everyone know. And then a few years later he followed through on that by serving possum at a black Tide dinner. Wow, but you will be happy to hear that slow Poke did not wind up on the Governor's dinner table. He got to live out the rest of his life in
peace and quiet at Raven Rock State Park. No One painted his toenails ever again, and he died a free, unroasted possum.
All right, here's the slow poke, and you know, interestingly enough, Governor Scott was not the only American politician to proudly feast on possum meat. Multiple presidents were known to sample the dish at one time or another, but the most frequent offender in that regard was our old buddy William Taft, who famously attended a possum and Tater's feast two months before his inauguration. The event was hosted in early nineteen oh nine by the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, and the
main course was requested by Taft himself. His choice of possum was basically a nod and a plea to the Southern States, which had voted overwhelmingly against him. It's unclear how many new supporters he won that night, but if nothing else, Taff seemed to enjoy the meal. According to the Associated Press quote, after several helpings to the dish, mister Taft received a message from a doctor sitting nearby telling him to be careful, but he paid no attention
to the warning. Soon there was only a shattered wreck remaining of the eighteen pound Billy possum that was toted up to mister Taft's table.
That is insane. Eighteen pounds is a lot of meat, let alone possum meat. But uh, who named this possum Billy?
Well, that's the thing. Billy Possum was a nickname for William Taft. The hunting exploits of his predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt had inspired the creation of the Teddy Bear, and in the lead up to Taft's Possum Supper, a cartoonist named Lewis Greg joke that Teddy bears would now be supplanted by Billy possums as the nation's new favorite toy.
That's amazing, and I always love when someone tries to capitalize on someone else's more authentic trend. But I mean, I feel like the Teddy Bear was named that because Roosevelt supposedly like spared the life of a bear, but in task case, he devours this eighteen pound namesake and a fancy dinner party that is not endearing in the least.
Yeah, it's not the same thing, And that's sort of the joke Greg was trying to make. Wouldn't it be ridiculous? If kids started cuddling up with stuffed possums just because the new An eight one. And you know, since the cartoon was published just five days before the banquet, it was still on everybody's mind that night, so much so that Taft was actually presented with his very own Billy
possum stuffed animal after the meal. Again, it was meant as a joke, but once word got out, there was this mad dash among toy companies to capitalize on what they assumed would be the hot new craze. So by the end of the month, the newly formed Georgia Billy Possum Company was cranking out thousands of stuffed to possums in three different sizes, And by that summer, the German toy company Stife, which had popularized the Teddy Bear, had hopped on the bandwagon and released its own Billy possum.
That's interesting that the company behind the Teddy Bear I got on board. So did this whole thing take off?
No sales were abysmal, and the whole thing was deemed a failure by late July. Richard Stife, the nephew of the company's founder, later admitted that they never actually had faith in the product, saying, quote, I don't believe in mixing toys and politics, but they kept at me to make the Billy Possum, and then nobody wanted it. The American youngster instinctively turns away from what is ugly or grotesque. That was the trouble. It was too ugly an animal.
Yeah, well, I guess they never met Slopo, who was obviously a supermodel of the species. From everything I've read about.
It, that's right, prettiest possum. But don't feel too bad for old Billy. He lived on throughout Taff's presidency and songs and postcards, and because his toy was produced in such low numbers, even one in rough shape is worth thousands of dollars today. So even though he did not prove a worthy successor to the Teddy Bear, he still has his fans.
Well, I am one of them. And since this episode is all about celebrating the misunderstood majesty of these little underdogs or under possums, I want to close us out by spotlighting a town that does exactly that each and every New Year's Eve, and Gabe as a somewhat southern gentleman, I mean Maryland, Tennessee, etcetera. Accounts as the South. Right. Sure, I assume you're familiar with the annual possum drop that takes place in Tallipalooza, Georgia. Right.
Oh, yeah, I highlighted on my year. Yeah no, no, no, I've never heard of it.
Is Well, first of all, it's really more of an a possum lowering than a possum drop, and the animal in question has actually been dead for decades.
I don't think you're really selling this.
Maybe not, but it's definitely not as bad as it sounds. So Tallapoosa was originally known as Possum Snout, and this was because of its abundance of a possums. And now the town celebrates that possum rich history every year by lowering a taxidermy to possum named Spencer from the roof of a local law office. And it is kind of have a sweet take on the New Year's Eve ball drop, right, And I guess the tradition started in the mid nineteen nineties.
This is when the town officials decided to create their own New Year's Eve event, inspired by the town's old name. Now, the organizers asked the town's residential taxidermists Bud and Jackie Jones if they had mounted apossums that they could spare, and not surprisingly, they did so. The couple had found the poor little dead guy on the side of the road many many years ago and had taken to calling him Spencer in honor of Ralph Spencer, one of the
towns founding businessmen. Now, the inaugural Possum Drop was attended by only about forty people, but it since expanded into a city wide event. It has live music carnivalized. The estimated crowd at last year's drop was well over thirteen thousand people, which is more than four times the town's population. People actually come from all over the country to watch Spencer's yearly descent in his lighted countdown ball. I mean,
I think we should think about going next year. But while Billy Possum didn't win over the people's hearts and minds, Tallapoosa's stuffed apossum certainly has.
I love that. And you know, twenty twenty six is technically the year of the Horse, right according to the Chinese zodiac. But after that story, I'm thinking we should buck the system and declare it the year of the Apossum.
What do you think you with me? Since you introduced us to Billy Possum and the wonders of slubbing. I am going to give you today's trophy.
And look at that. You got it engraved and everything. Gabe Lucy a Possum Queen twenty twenty six. This is going right up on the mantle. Thank you, Mango.
Well, that is it for today's episode. We have a question for you out there. If you want to hear more of my ridiculous fact poetry like the Apossum poem, send us an email, send us a fact you want us to write about, or reach out on Blue Sky or Instagram. We are at Part Time Genius. We'll be back next week with another brand new episode in the meantime from Will, Dylan, Gabe, Mary, and myself. Thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is a production
of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. It is hosted by my good pal Will Pearson, who I've known for almost three decades now. That is insane to me. I'm the other co host, Mangeshatikular aka Mango. Our producer is Mary Phillips Sandy. She's actually a super producer. I'm going to fix that in post. Our writer is Gabe Lucier, who I've also known for like a decade at this point, maybe more. Dylan Fagan
is in the booth. He is always dressed up, always cheering us on, and always ready to hit record and then mix the show after he does a great job. I also want to shout out the executive producers from iHeart my Good Pals Katrina and Norvel and Ali Perry. We have social media support from Calypso Rallis. If you like our videos, that is all Calypso's handiwork for more
podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or tune in wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That's it from us here at Part Time Genius. Thank you so much for listening.