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Opossums eat insects, rodents, birds, eggs, frogs, plants, fruits and grain. Some species may eat the skeletal remains of rodents and roadkill animals to fulfill their calcium requirements. [45] In captivity, opossums will eat practically anything including dog and cat food, livestock fodder and discarded human food scraps and waste.
Commonly referred to simply as the possum, [7] it is a solitary nocturnal animal about the size of a domestic cat, and a successful opportunist. Opossums are familiar to many North Americans as they frequently inhabit settled areas near food sources like trash cans, pet food, compost piles, gardens or housemice.
An industry using fur pelts and wool mixed with possum fur fibre has developed, with trappers and hunters providing raw material. The fur is often sold as 'eco-fur' by a number of manufacturing and retailing businesses. Possum hairs are hollow, like polar bear hairs, and the wool produced is both soft, and an excellent insulator. [23]
Phalangeriformes primarily eat leaves, fruit, and insects, though many are omnivorous and will eat small vertebrates or other plant material. Many phalangeriformes do not have population estimates, but the ones that do range from 50 mature individuals to 75,000.
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]
The bushy-tailed opossum (Glironia venusta) is an opossum from South America. It was first described by English zoologist Oldfield Thomas in 1912. It is a medium-sized opossum characterized by a large, oval, dark ears, fawn to cinnamon coat with a buff to gray underside, grayish limbs, and a furry tail.
The common brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula, from the Greek for "furry tailed" and the Latin for "little fox", previously in the genus Phalangista [4]) is a nocturnal, semiarboreal marsupial of the family Phalangeridae, native to Australia and invasive in New Zealand, and the second-largest of the possums.
Gray short-tailed opossums are relatively small animals, with a superficial resemblance to voles.In the wild they have head-body length of 12 to 18 cm (4.7 to 7.1 in) and weigh 58 to 95 grams (2.0 to 3.4 oz); males are larger than females. [5]