I had an email from a reader called Dottianne the other day, and she has rightly pointed out that the pictures of the possums over at my post called Strange Australian Back Garden Beastie Sound Explained are not, how can I break this to you, possums.
They are both “opossums”. Click the link above, check them out and then come back here and I’ll explain all.
What’s with the ‘O’?
Here’s the big surprise, well, for me anyway. The American possums are actually called opossums, scientific name, Didelphimorphia. But for some reason, they are more commonly referred to as possums, just like our native Australian species.
But our Australian possums are (scientific name) Phalangeridae. Both are marsupials, but that’s about it. Other than that, they are not really related at all. But I wasn’t the only one who was fooled by all this; there are still plenty of websites out there that claim possums and opossums are the same. They are not.
It seems that all the confusion was started by Capt Cook’s botanist, Sir Joseph Banks, who named the Australian animal a possum because it “looked like” the American opossum. Luckily, he didn’t travel north, otherwise our crocodiles would be called alligators.
The big difference though, for me, and you will not find this information in too many encyclopaedias or wildlife books, is that the American possum has pointy teeth and looks scary and the Australian possum is a real cutie. First, check out the two opossums on my previous post if you haven’t already, see above.
Now checkout my Australian Possum Parade, assembled following a raid over at flickr……
Image above courtesy of andyroo64
Image above courtesy of Bedwetting in Australia
Image above courtesy of ekai
Image above courtesy of johnvw
Image above courtesy of photolaps
Image above courtesy of small
Image above courtesy of wiccked
Image above courtesy of wollombi
I still have my possum living somewhere in the garden. I hear him a lot, I see his pooh pooh a lot, but I very rarely see him. He is very reclusive. I’ve only ever seen him once and you can read about that experience in the same blog post that has the pictures of the American opossums.
Shame, I’d have liked to get to know him.
Related posts:
- Strange Australian Back Garden Beastie Sound Explained
- Our Camping Weekend in Australia, Any Intruders?
- Aboriginal Art. The History Explained. Sort of….
- Australia Versus the UK: Time Zones Explained
- Lights, Heavies, Mids and Schooners Explained
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Well, the Aussie Phalangeridae Nocturnal are a feature in backyards too. I don’t mind them around nor the sound they make deep into the night even when I’m halfway into a gap betwixt wanting to sleep and the verge of snoozing. Why? because I’m deaf!. But what bothers me about them is that they abandoned their fallen long dead but now last advanced stage of decaying tree home and instead choose to squat (without paying rent) into the space between the roof and ceiling of my house!. And they seem to make a racket every night there like ‘hardnosed drunken idiots at the bar come pub closing hours’, or were like having a ‘rowdy convention in the name of war against their worst enemy the house cat!’.
Oh yeah!, I now hear them up there every night now!. And wot’s more, they p*ss wood-carcenogenic urine everywhere up there, gradually causing the ceiling wood to rot over time before a piece of it collapsed and landed on the top edge of my soup bowl, literally flipping the hot soup all over my face at the table!. As l looked up in excruciating pain through one slightly closed eye I saw two of the blighters sneering down – with a kooky expression – at me as if they’re uttering a “tee hee heh heh!” attitude with their bulbous scary-looking illuminous eyes through that smelly p*ss stinking dark abyss of a hole where that piece of rotted wood broke off. What were they thinking? a “tee-hee heh heh”?.
Eh?, sorry possums, but l’m not a cat. Since ya all won’t pay up damages anyway l’m gonna catch ya all and relocate ya all somewhere fifty miles away to Woop Woop behind the Black Stump, and then say to ya all ” Now, ya all listen up, my house is’nt a tree, right?, …..tah tah!.”
Don’t get me wrong, l love wildlife, you don’t blame wildlife, it was Land Developers and Woodgetters who took – and still taking away – their natural beloved habitats in the first place!.
Hi Colin
I can’t help thinking you’ve got the rough end of the stick here. You appear to have bogan possum’s around your way but I feel a duty to explain to my good readers that you can’t tarnish all possums with the same brush.
Many of the possums around our way don’t drink to excess at all and if they do, they seem to make their way home in a quiet and orderly fashion. It’s very rare that we hear them at all and it’s been a long time since I heard those strange beastie sounds in the night.
I got to agree with you on one thing though, they do seem to poo and pee wherever they are caught short. They could at least go behind a tree or if they are living in your house, make their way to the toilet like the rest of us.
Before considering relocating them to Woop Woop, have you tried to find out why they behave the way they do? Perhaps there is an underlying cause to their unruly behaviour.
Well, I suspect a neighbor’s cat with mangly scars all over its head and part of it’s ear looked bitten or torn off. I see the cat something like every two or three days in my yard and a few times going into the space going between the roof and ceiling of my abode but when l go nite- nite to sleep l actually hear a racket coming from said space. and the possibility in the Possums’s behaviour might be stemming from that, (fight hungry) Cat?.
I’ve seen Cats fight Possums before but neither wins a fight, and occurs only at night through to dark early morn’.
Both end up with scarred heads. A fight lasts sporadically within half an hour before the Cat had enough, but it is the Cat who would return again and again to have more spars with the powerful Possums. I know that cats like to invade on any other animals’s homes as long as it is’nt an animal (or rival) no bigger than its size. The possums always hold their territory but Cats are invaders (and hunters).
Bob, not many people rarely see and hear Possums
around. I agree.
I’ve seen around 11 of them over the course of my 13 years in far north coast NSW and at least five in my ten years in the mountains of Victoria and all in the wilds. I often stroll on moonlit nights into the forests, not to mention in urban areas with streetside trees. And presently in the space between the roof and the ceiling of my house. I tell you that the present ones in my roof are frequent noise makers so a Cat invasion may be the cause to their behaviour.
Anyway, another behaviour pattern in Possums is one of their natural but normal instincts, like scraping their tails (although l don’t hear that) on the ground which occurs when two male Possums eyeball each other off, be it territorial rights(?) or competition in the presence of a female.
Last time l saw a possum was a few months ago when one got trapped in my glass door loungeroom woodheater full of cold ashes (no fire or burning embers because it was in the middle of summer). Possum entered there via fluepipe in the chimney. I opened the glass heater door so it could walk out of the open house doors but it stubbornly would not leave the woodheater for half an hour. I put on heavy duty gloves and firmly got a hold on him/her and him/her did not struggle anymore once him/her is in my clasp. I took him/ her outside and released him/her. That one had a distinct scar on its snout and is one of the Possums in my roof.
You could say the woodheater drama is an unusual occurrence let alone a human actually handled one. hmm… that IS rare. Well l thought nothing of it. Given I’m a nature loving man l’ve seen plenty of other wildlifes in the bush scutter off from ‘Bush Boogeyman’ me anyway!.
Well, I knew possums were very territorial and would defend their patch, but I didn’t think cats would bother to try and take them on. I thought that mice and birds were more of their kind of thing. I am also surprised that the possum doesn’t win hands down, but then I suppose that depends on the cat and the possum involved.
I have now seen four possums since I moved here to Australia, which was about three years ago. Two of them were in two different friends back gardens after dark while we were outside drinking. Then I saw one when we went camping and of course, there was the possum that pressed his nose against my front room window whilst I was watching TV.
Sounds to me as though possums are possibly as curious as cats, which is probably why you had one end up inside your stove.
As for that tail scraping, I heard something like that and posted a video about it. Christine commented and said it is the sound of a possums growl, but maybe it was a dragging tail. Sounded more like a dragging sound to me than a growl. Have a listen if you get a chance, see what you think……
Strange beastie sound in my back garden
American opossums aren’t scary at all! Sure they have teeth a bit sharper than cats… but I have one sleepin’ on my belly right now! Her name’s cuddles, she’s hypoallergenic, and the worst part about her is she REFUSES to stop tickling my belly button with her nose. It’s quite horrible.
She sure sounds friendly enough, have you been feeding her? I haven’t managed to get too near any of ours, maybe I look scary!