Welcome to the second column featuring the animals of Speaking of Wildlife, various native species that can’t possibly be released into nature. Today we’ll be examining one of the centre’s most unique and certainly most distinguished inhabitants: the Virginia opossum, North America’s only marsupial species.
Marsupials are most obviously distinguished by their childcare methods: unlike the placental mammals readers will be familiar with (hopefully, given said readers ARE placental mammals), marsupial infants (joeys) are born very early in development, and must make their way into their mother’s abdominal pouch (or ‘marsupium,’ if you prefer Latin) to continue their growth there.
In the Virginia opossum the mother sometimes produces more joeys than she has teats (thirteen; yes, an uneven number), possibly to account for the not entirely zero chance that they become lost on their journey into the pouch (large kangaroo species offer their joeys the most challenge: in some of these the mother offers assistance by licking a path to the pouch through her fur, for her newborns to follow).
After about two months or so of pouch time the young opossums will vacate their mother’s pouch for her back, where they will cling like small furry limpets for another few months until they’re done learning and growing and ready to clear out. The survival rate, as can be expected by a small species with prolific young, is not spectacular.
Larry, Speaking of Wildlife’s right honourable and esteemed marsupial ambassador, was very nearly part of this high infant mortality rate: he was born without eyes (a condition called Congenital Anophthalmia), and although that doesn’t matter much inside a pouch it led to him being found alone in the wild by a human, presumably after falling off his mother and being unable to locate her afterwards.
Reuniting him with her was out of the question – she’d long since left the scene, possibly and justifiably unable to quite tell the difference between thirteen babies crawling on her face and twelve – and so he was taken into care without the possibility of release.
Larry is quite adept at finding his way around his environment without sight, but would suffer obvious difficulties in dealing with a predator or finding food in the wild. Processing food is less troublesome for him: Larry, as do many marsupials, possesses over 40 teeth; a nice round 50, in the case of the Virginia opossum, 10 of which are upper incisors for a mouthful of needles. He also reacts to anything that smells like food by putting it in his mouth, which means among other things that his meals have to be served in bowls that he can’t knock over, to avoid him possibly trying to consume his floor substrate (wood chips and twigs are NOT part of an opossum’s diet, although they’re very liberal in their eating habits).
Like planting a tree, enjoying Larry is best done immediately: this spring, Larry will celebrate his third birthday, a nigh-unheard-of milestone for an opossum in the wild, and a hallmark of old age even for one in captivity. Already he has developed the elderly old man opossum habit of sitting down and looking utterly tuckered after a big meal or bout of exploration.
As with all creatures, it’s not how long you had, it’s whether you had a good time with it, and Larry has most certainly made the most out of his life. And the yoghurt. He especially enjoys his yoghurt.
Larry theoretically has the smallest brain-to-body ratio (encephalization quotient) of any mammal at the center, but is most likely smarter than I am, as while he once innocently mistook my hand for part of his food, I myself put my hand in his food dish in the first place. Narrowly avoiding those 50 teeth, I kept my hand, Larry kept his food, and we all learned something. Life is educational.
Speaking of Wildlife provides permanent sanctuary to non-releasable Ontario wildlife and has been delivering interactive wildlife education since 1989. For more information or to book at tour, go to speakingofwildlife.ca.
