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Marsupials are a diverse group of mammals belonging to the infraclass Marsupialia.They are natively found in Australasia, Wallacea, and the Americas.One of the defining features of marsupials is their unique reproductive strategy, where the young are born in a relatively undeveloped state and then nurtured within a pouch on their mother's abdomen.
The latter subclass is divided into two infraclasses: pouched mammals (metatherians or marsupials), and placental mammals (eutherians, for which see List of placental mammals). Classification updated from Wilson and Reeder's "Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference" using the "Planet Mammifères" website. [1]
The common opossum (Didelphis marsupialis), also called the southern or black-eared opossum [2] or gambá, and sometimes called a possum, is a marsupial species living from the northeast of Mexico to Bolivia (reaching the coast of the South Pacific Ocean to the central coast of Peru), including Trinidad and Tobago and the Windwards in the Caribbean, [2] where it is called manicou. [3]
A distinctive characteristic common to most of these species is that the young are carried in a pouch. Well-known marsupials include kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, opossums, wombats, Tasmanian devils, and the extinct thylacine. Some lesser-known marsupials are the dunnarts, potoroos, and the cuscus.
The largest difference between the opossum and non-marsupial mammals is the bifurcated penis of the male and bifurcated vagina of the female (the source of the term didelphimorph, from the Greek didelphys, meaning "double-wombed"). [38] Opossum spermatozoa exhibit sperm-pairing, forming conjugate pairs in the epididymis.
The bandicoot is a member of the order Peramelemorphia, and the word "bandicoot" is often used informally to refer to any peramelemorph, such as the bilby. [2] The term originally referred to the unrelated Indian bandicoot rat from the Telugu word pandikokku (పందికొక్కు) wherein pandi means pig and kokku means rat.
Like all female marsupials, the female's reproductive system is bifid, with two lateral vaginae, uteri, and ovaries. [45] The male's penis is also bifid, with two heads, and as is common in New World marsupials, the sperm pair up in the testes and only separate as they come close to the egg. [45] Males have three pairs of Cowper's glands. [46]
In one Queensland population, males apparently need a month of consorting with females before they can mate with them. [22] Females have a gestation period of 16–18 days, after which they give birth to single young. [7] [8] A newborn brushtail possum is only 1.5 cm (0.6 in) long and weighs only 2 g (0.07 oz). As usual for marsupials, the ...