Speaker 1: Oh, it's the smell of the tent that you haven't
Speaker 1: used in two years, and it's got a little bit
Speaker 1: of mildew with but it's comforting Ali Ward and back
Speaker 1: with an episode of Ologies. I don't even want to
Speaker 1: intro I don't want to even be talking right now.
Speaker 1: I just want you to hear the interview. I want
Speaker 1: you to hear all about the majesty of the world's
Speaker 1: most beloved rat faced trash goblin cottlebugs who lug around
Speaker 1: skin sex full of infants. So here's the briefest of introductions. Okay.
Speaker 1: Theologists got their PhD studying members of the genus Didelphus,
Speaker 1: most specifically the Virginia possum opossum, north America's only native marsupial,
Speaker 1: the only one in North America. They got their bachelors
Speaker 1: in biology from Boden College, a master's and a PhD
Speaker 1: from the University of Michigan. They're also studying stem education
Speaker 1: and how college professors can make learning easier during a
Speaker 1: freaking pandemic. They're so passionate about psychom and education and
Speaker 1: possums or possums. We get into it, but first we're
Speaker 1: gonna thank everyone at patreon dot com slash ologies for
Speaker 1: submitting such intensely perfect questions for this episode and for
Speaker 1: supporting the podcast since before we were even a podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks to everyone who leaves reviews and rates the show,
Speaker 1: like this squirming Hairless Pink review just days old, left
Speaker 1: by Swinging Pro, who wrote in this podcast is just
Speaker 1: a bunch of dorks getting stupidly excited about learning, and
Speaker 1: I love it so much. Oh swing Pro, you had
Speaker 1: me there for a sec, but you're one of us.
Speaker 2: We love you back.
Speaker 1: If you left her review this week, I read it
Speaker 1: straight up, so thank you. And congrats to Brandy Blonde
Speaker 1: and Tiger twenty forty for your science student journeys. I
Speaker 1: read those. Okay, let's put some fuzzy munchkins in your hearts.
Speaker 1: Let's get into it. I heard of this ologious work
Speaker 1: this past Friday. I DMed her the all caps message,
Speaker 1: will you talk to me about possums? What is your schedule?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: I'm excited, Doctor Walsh. Shameless begging and a quick response.
Speaker 1: We chatted just this past Saturday morning all about this
Speaker 1: not at all rodent creature and their general vibe dramatic
Speaker 1: death throws from tails to teeth to tiny hands and
Speaker 1: numbered nipples, orphaned babies, pet possibilities, the best possum chokes,
Speaker 1: the worst ones, rabies, tick, vacuums, myths, flim flam, the
Speaker 1: rise of the memes, and more with nationally recognized mimmologist,
Speaker 1: biology educator, environmental scientist, researcher, and acclaimed opossmologist doctor Lisa Walsh.
Speaker 2: Oh let's do it, doctor Walsh.
Speaker 1: Can you hear me?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: I can?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, so excited to talk about possums. You
Speaker 1: have no idea. Maybe you do have an idea because
Speaker 1: you're as scientist, so everyone's excited to talk possums. But
Speaker 1: I'm very excited. That's great. I had dreams all night
Speaker 1: about this podcast, and I was that I had so
Speaker 1: many questions from listeners that I couldn't sort through them.
Speaker 3: All, which oh oh wow, Well, I mean dreams all night.
Speaker 3: That fits with a nocturnal animal.
Speaker 1: I already love her.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: First thing I'll have you too, is if you could
Speaker 1: say your first and last name in your pronouns.
Speaker 3: Sure, I am Lisa Walsh. Pronouns she her hers perfect?
Speaker 1: And okay, help me figure out what ology this is?
Speaker 1: Would it be de Dell Main morphology. No, possibly.
Speaker 3: I guess it depends on how scientific you want it
Speaker 3: to be, and like how narrow do you want it
Speaker 3: to be, because it could be like metatherology for all marsupials,
Speaker 3: didelpha morphology, or this morning, my husband suggested apossmology, and
Speaker 3: I think that that rolls off the tongue better than
Speaker 3: the more scientific, the more scientific names.
Speaker 1: You know. I did look around and I did see
Speaker 1: that more people were using possmology than Didell for morepheology,
Speaker 1: So it might be that. But the first question is
Speaker 1: oh possum versus possum least set the record straight or
Speaker 1: so confused?
Speaker 3: I know. I don't know if Americans decided that using
Speaker 3: the o sounded hokey or you know, back when there
Speaker 3: was more anti Irish sentiment, they just didn't want they
Speaker 3: didn't want to say, oh, possum. But it comes from
Speaker 3: an American Indian Algonquin word a passem, where it means
Speaker 3: white animal. And John Smith, being the colonizer that he was,
Speaker 3: just decided to steal the name and anglicize it. And
Speaker 3: this was actually the first marsupial that Europeans had encountered.
Speaker 3: I've read that the Spanish actually came across in a
Speaker 3: possum with Christopher Columbus and they brought it back to
Speaker 3: Spain and they're like, oh my gosh, she's carrying her
Speaker 3: young in the pouch. And eventually the British stole the
Speaker 3: name from the American Indians and called it opossum. And
Speaker 3: then when another group of colonizers came across more marsupials
Speaker 3: in Australia, they said, well, these look very similar, they
Speaker 3: have similar traits, they also live in trees. Let's call
Speaker 3: them by the same name. And at some point they
Speaker 3: decided we are going to confuse people, so let's call
Speaker 3: them possum instead of opossum. But I think that ended
Speaker 3: up confusing people more.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes so much sense. And how did marsupials
Speaker 1: get to North America.
Speaker 3: They have a very long and confusing evolutionary history. They've
Speaker 3: been popping up all over. That's because they've been around
Speaker 3: for over two hundred million years.
Speaker 1: Woh my god, yeah, two hundred million years.
Speaker 3: So you know this goes back to how well do
Speaker 3: you know your continents and the history of continents, So
Speaker 3: Pangaea to Laurasia and Gondwana. And I am not a paleontologist.
Speaker 3: So I'm not great at it, but I don't know
Speaker 3: if I should be admitting that. But we we actually
Speaker 3: think that they evolved and emerged first in land that
Speaker 3: was to become North America in Europe, and at some
Speaker 3: point North America and South America were together, and the
Speaker 3: group that would survive made it to South America. The
Speaker 3: group once the continents separated that were in North America
Speaker 3: and Europe died out, and the South American group wandered
Speaker 3: through what's to become Antarctica, made it to Australasia and
Speaker 3: really just exploded. They did great there. The ones that
Speaker 3: were stuck in South America, they were okay, there's a
Speaker 3: few groups that are there. But then about two million
Speaker 3: years ago, the two American continents came back together and
Speaker 3: there was a land bridge, and so that's how they
Speaker 3: made it into North America. But it's funny you read
Speaker 3: the history of this American interchange. They call it where
Speaker 3: a bunch of different groups of North American animals went south.
Speaker 3: South American animals went north. So Armadilla went north, great
Speaker 3: Slots went north, and the possum was like, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna wait, I'm gonna wait. I'm gonna wait.
Speaker 3: So we don't think they were one of the last
Speaker 3: animals to arrive in North America actually during that interchange.
Speaker 3: So they were just taking their their sweet time. Oh,
Speaker 3: which you know, I can appreciate.
Speaker 1: It's what they do, right. They're not very fast critters
Speaker 1: from what I understand.
Speaker 3: They're not. But man, when they want a book it
Speaker 3: they can. You do not expect them to move fast.
Speaker 3: So when they do it, maybe it seems a lot
Speaker 3: faster than it is. I've seen a manateee book it
Speaker 3: same thing. You're like, really, yeah, you're supposed to be slow,
Speaker 3: so when they move fast, it's still relative. But it's
Speaker 3: just so surprising.
Speaker 1: I needed footage of this, and I needed it bad
Speaker 1: so down the apostlem hole, I merrily fell watching videos
Speaker 1: of these ash colored fuzz loaves just loping about sports
Speaker 1: fields and trail cams. Look, what is that strange animal
Speaker 1: running across the lawn? Why? It's an opossum. And yes,
Speaker 1: they can scurry with the best of them, topping out
Speaker 1: at four miles an hour, which you think sounds slow,
Speaker 1: but that's a fifteen minute mile and Michael Phelps can
Speaker 1: only swim six miles per hour. Manatees, when they want
Speaker 1: to get the fuck away from you, they can jet
Speaker 1: twenty miles an hour. That's more than three times faster
Speaker 1: than an Olympic gold medalist. So next time you get
Speaker 1: on the freeway you hit twenty mph, just think of
Speaker 1: amanate drag racing you and winning a giant underwater yam
Speaker 1: with a beaver tail, leaving you in the dust.
Speaker 3: But you're like, oh my gosh, that was actually really.
Speaker 1: Fast, And now what about you and your evolution and migration?
Speaker 1: How did you come to be a very in my mind,
Speaker 1: celebrated opossum recon.
Speaker 3: I started my undergraduate career convinced I was going to
Speaker 3: be a marine biologist, and I was doing research on
Speaker 3: this single celled organism, a dinoflagelet that lives symbiotically inside coral.
Speaker 3: The problem is they have not one but two cell walls,
Speaker 3: and so if you're trying to do anything in terms
Speaker 3: of genetics, just to get at the DNA, it took
Speaker 3: me about two months to figure out how to shear
Speaker 3: open their cell walls and get at their DNA. And
Speaker 3: I was just so frustrated sitting in the lab looking
Speaker 3: at the Cayagen DN easy kit. That's what it's called.
Speaker 3: It's called d N Easy. I was like, this is
Speaker 3: anything but easy. I was reading the manual and they said,
Speaker 3: you know you want this many grams if it's a mousetail,
Speaker 3: you want this many grams. If it's mouth blood, I
Speaker 3: guess it would be leaders, this many miller leaders if
Speaker 3: it's mouth blood. And I was just like, mice, mammals,
Speaker 3: those sound so much easier to ask questions about, first
Speaker 3: of all, because you can see them. So the dinoflagelet,
Speaker 3: we didn't even know how they reproduced. So I was like,
Speaker 3: I can make a bunch of guesses, but if you
Speaker 3: don't even know the natural history, you can't. I guess
Speaker 3: I couldn't ask the questions I wanted to at the time.
Speaker 3: So I found a wonderful advisor at the University of Michigan,
Speaker 3: Priscilla Tucker. She works on mice. I was like, oh, mice, great.
Speaker 3: She said, well, what do you want to research? I said, well,
Speaker 3: I really want to just ask questions about. I guess
Speaker 3: in my mind, I was like, oh, beavers, they went
Speaker 3: through this huge population die off because we were hunting
Speaker 3: them too much. I guess trapping them too much.
Speaker 1: So her advisor, Doctor Tucker, said, you gotta talk to
Speaker 1: this mimmalogist Phil Myers. Oh, he's got all the steamy,
Speaker 1: hot goss on just a bunch of critters that are
Speaker 1: not microscopic.
Speaker 3: And he said, you know, the opossum is doing some
Speaker 3: weird stuff. It is. It's just keep it keeps trekking
Speaker 3: further and further north. And we don't know genetically what
Speaker 3: that range expansion north looks like. And so I said, okay,
Speaker 3: I will look at that for my master's which translates
Speaker 3: into collecting a bunch of roadkill over an entire summer.
Speaker 2: I love this woman.
Speaker 3: Because I so I tried trapping a possums, which is
Speaker 3: how I know how fast they are because the only
Speaker 3: the only possum I managed to trap just he was
Speaker 3: a little guy. He had probably just left mom uh,
Speaker 3: and he just booked it as soon as he got
Speaker 3: out of the trap. He was like the fastest little
Speaker 3: apossum torpedo you've ever seen. And I mostly caught raccoons
Speaker 3: and I was.
Speaker 1: Like, oh my gosh, it's so funny to think of
Speaker 1: by catch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh, it was mostly bycatch. I was terrified of
Speaker 3: catching as skunk. I luckily never did, and I said,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't think I'm not going to get
Speaker 3: enough of a sample of a possums if I'm just
Speaker 3: doing this, And I said, you know, you know it's
Speaker 3: easy to get roadkill. So I drove around Ohio and
Speaker 3: Michigan all that summer picking up roadkill.
Speaker 1: Did you pick up the whole meat pancake or did
Speaker 1: you just take a vial of what you needed?
Speaker 3: So there are people who do that, and I have
Speaker 3: done that, but I was mostly just looking for their ears.
Speaker 3: It's really nice, fleshy and it's easy to get as
Speaker 3: long as a scavenger hasn't run off with the skull
Speaker 3: and they've done that, they will take the entire head.
Speaker 3: And so if there was no head, I would try
Speaker 3: digging up other stuff. But luckily I was not taking
Speaker 3: the whole thing. My car would have been very fragrant
Speaker 3: if I had.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you ever get stopped or questioned at all
Speaker 1: while you were snipping ears off of roadkill?
Speaker 3: That's a great question. I noticed this interesting dynamic, which
Speaker 3: I think I would do the same if I saw
Speaker 3: a strange woman parking her car and walking to this
Speaker 3: dead thing. Women would just stand inside their house and
Speaker 3: watch me mm hmm, like okay, I'm going to monitor her,
Speaker 3: make sure she's not do anything on my property. But
Speaker 3: the men would stop behind me, stop their car, say
Speaker 3: are you okay? Can I get you anything? And I
Speaker 3: was like, I'm wearing a fluorescent vest with bright blue
Speaker 3: lab gloves. I'm good at. My favorite story is there
Speaker 3: was this man who had clearly just finished his workday
Speaker 3: at a garage, so he was full in a mechanic suit,
Speaker 3: and I think he was like, oh my gosh, it
Speaker 3: is a woman in distress. I have been waiting for this.
Speaker 3: And he's like, can I help you? And I was
Speaker 3: like I and this possum was literally on the double
Speaker 3: yellow line. It was smack in the middle of the road.
Speaker 1: It was oh good.
Speaker 3: It was a slow country road, and I was just like,
Speaker 3: I know. He offered to like carry it, and I
Speaker 3: was like, I'm trying to scrape it off the road
Speaker 3: so that I'm not sampling it in the road. I
Speaker 3: don't want to become double roadkill, which was the really
Speaker 3: interesting thing driving around. So if you start looking for roadkill,
Speaker 3: you will find it. And there were a lot of
Speaker 3: double road kills with possums because they actually I mean
Speaker 3: as scavengers, they will go eat the roadkill. So I
Speaker 3: found a possums with porcupines up in northern Michigan, and
Speaker 3: I found them multiple times with raccoons, which is really
Speaker 3: a who's eating who questions?
Speaker 1: Yes, that was my next question is who? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean at least they died doing what they loved, but yeah,
Speaker 1: who was scavenging who? That's a great question. That's like
Speaker 1: anyone out there needs to get a PhD in roadkill.
Speaker 1: Just an aside, I do have a future episode lined
Speaker 1: up about RhoD ecology and I will ask this very
Speaker 1: important question. Also, what did doctor Walsh find from all
Speaker 1: the sampling? Why are these sweet backyard beasts lumbering toward
Speaker 1: the northern territories? What she says, the first thing you
Speaker 1: do with population genetics is try to figure out how
Speaker 1: many populations are there and who belongs to which we
Speaker 1: are the western Great Lakes there were two distinct opossum populations,
Speaker 1: a lower Michigan and Ohio posse and a Wisconsin an
Speaker 1: Upper Michigan one which I'm sorry, Upper Michigan. How are
Speaker 1: you not your own state? You're a disembodied land mass
Speaker 1: who skirted in as Michigan's plus one. I'm always confused
Speaker 1: by you, but you're beautiful anyway. Some interesting crossovers in
Speaker 1: these two groups.
Speaker 3: But why And when I spoke to a fur trapper
Speaker 3: in I believe he was in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan,
Speaker 3: he said, you know, a little while ago, we had
Speaker 3: a really bad drought and we had to have hay
Speaker 3: bales brought in from elsewhere in Michigan, and apossums will
Speaker 3: occasionally den in I guess loose hay bales, and he
Speaker 3: thought that they they got transferred from one part of
Speaker 3: Michigan to another.
Speaker 1: Because of this. So that's a good theory if.
Speaker 3: You search for it online. I believe there is a
Speaker 3: picture of an apossum stuck in a.
Speaker 1: I would let them sleep in my linen closet. I
Speaker 1: love them so much. They're so cute, they're so wonderful.
Speaker 3: They would really like your linen closet.
Speaker 1: I feel like they would love it, and so they
Speaker 1: will sometimes hitch rides.
Speaker 3: Perhaps, yeah, sometimes hitch rids. What I looked at then
Speaker 3: was you can look at how diverse the populations are
Speaker 3: using the genetics collected, and I compared it to winter
Speaker 3: climate data across the region I had sampled, and I
Speaker 3: also compared it to human density, so basically a measurement
Speaker 3: of how urban the area was and agricultural density, so
Speaker 3: how much farmland, how many farms were around. Older, bigger
Speaker 3: populations will be more diverse. And what I found by
Speaker 3: proxy is that the older populations were where there was
Speaker 3: less days of snow on the ground. So it wasn't
Speaker 3: actually about temperature, it was about days of snow on
Speaker 3: the ground. So if you didn't know, Noah has that data,
Speaker 3: I did not know that until I set out to
Speaker 3: ask this question.
Speaker 1: Just a side note, So NOAH is the National Oceanic
Speaker 1: and Atmospheric Administration. It is not some rando named Noah.
Speaker 1: Although curiosity never really fails to get the better of me.
Speaker 1: And yes, I did go on LinkedIn to type in
Speaker 1: Noah plus Noah in the search bar, and there are
Speaker 1: so many Noah's working at Noah and that pleases me anyway.
Speaker 1: Possums don't like ground snow? Why such divas.
Speaker 3: Just like you or I, They wouldn't want to go
Speaker 3: walking outside in deep snow because essentially their paws are
Speaker 3: like our feet, so we I'm sure there are some
Speaker 3: people out there who do that. But I would not
Speaker 3: want to walk barefoot on the snow.
Speaker 1: Their paws are so cute and pink and fleshy. And actually,
Speaker 1: let's start with the pink adoor. Yes, what Okay, they
Speaker 1: got a long snowt and one million teeth? Is that correct? Scientifically?
Speaker 3: They do have fifty teeth. Yeah, so they have a
Speaker 3: lot of teeth. So some people say that they have
Speaker 3: the most teeth in the mammal kingdom. That is, that
Speaker 3: is not true. There are others out there. I believe
Speaker 3: there's some armadillos aren't there with more teeth. I did
Speaker 3: the research a while ago, and then I forgot it.
Speaker 1: She is correct. There are seventy four teeth in the
Speaker 1: mouth of the giant armadillo, the most of any mammal.
Speaker 1: But what about the animal with the most teeth on earth?
Speaker 1: A terrifying array exists of jagged shredding mouth knives numbering
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand. Who's got them? Who's got all those teeth?
Speaker 2: Snails?
Speaker 1: Just snails which are commonly eaten by apossums acting as
Speaker 1: your garden bouncer. And yes, apossums have fifty teeth, which
Speaker 1: is still roughly fifty percent more than are thirty two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they have a lot of teeth. The teeth allow
Speaker 3: them to eat whatever they want. Opossums really need a
Speaker 3: lot of calcium, and so the teeth help them with
Speaker 3: breaking down little mice, boons, bird bones so that they
Speaker 3: can get all the calcium that they need.
Speaker 1: Why do they need so much calcium? Is it to
Speaker 1: make more teeth? It might be.
Speaker 3: I don't know if we know the why. We do
Speaker 3: know what happens if they don't get enough calcium. So
Speaker 3: it hasn't been scientifically reported for wild apossums, but for
Speaker 3: some orphan depossums, if they're brought into this rehab center
Speaker 3: and they aren't fit a diet high enough in calcium,
Speaker 3: they develop metabolic bone disease, which is kind of like
Speaker 3: rickets for a possums, and then they become non releasable.
Speaker 3: There's a really cute story, it's cute and sad at
Speaker 3: the same time from a wild life read rehab center
Speaker 3: where there was an orphan apossum and he loved grapes
Speaker 3: so much so as a generalist, they would they would
Speaker 3: be given basically a buffet to eat each day, but
Speaker 3: he would prioritize eating all the grapes, and then he
Speaker 3: wouldn't be eating enough protein when he was when he
Speaker 3: was little, and so he did end up developing metabolic
Speaker 3: bone disease. So I just I think it's so funny
Speaker 3: that he loved grapes so much that he ate himself sick. Oh,
Speaker 3: but he was great, So he was deemed non releasable,
Speaker 3: and Steve theopassum became an education opossum. So that's all.
Speaker 3: I guess that's the that's the one silver lining if
Speaker 3: they do develop opossum rickets Steve was the.
Speaker 1: Best freaking Steve. What kind of sense of smell do
Speaker 1: they have? What kind of eyesight do they have? Walk
Speaker 1: me through anatomy for anyone who has not gotten to
Speaker 1: be close to an apossum.
Speaker 3: Yeah, their eyesight is not good. It's probably a big
Speaker 3: reason and why a lot of people who have encountered
Speaker 3: opossums they say the possum didn't really react to me,
Speaker 3: or they have a story about their dog running after
Speaker 3: the apossum and the apossum not being able to respond
Speaker 3: quick enough. So yeah, I mean, I've I saw an
Speaker 3: old grizzled guy just walking through my parents' backyard a
Speaker 3: few summers ago, and he just did not see me
Speaker 3: at all. But they have a really really good sense
Speaker 3: of smell.
Speaker 1: Oh that's helpful probably for finding roadkill and eggs and bones.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, they'll eat pretty much everything.
Speaker 1: I know that they've been lauded as I think, as
Speaker 1: you've said, tick vacuums. How many ticks do they really eat?
Speaker 3: There was a recent publication out where they looked at
Speaker 3: the stomach contents of wild apossums and they did not
Speaker 3: come across ticks. And so what that suggests is this
Speaker 3: older publication where they put larval ticks on captive apossums
Speaker 3: and saw how many had a full blood meal and
Speaker 3: fill off the apossum. They said, that's not necessarily the
Speaker 3: best way to determine how many ticks and apossum eats. So,
Speaker 3: considering they eat everything, and that the researchers with the
Speaker 3: captive apossums did find evidence of ticks in the feces,
Speaker 3: they do eat ticks. They're not going out of their
Speaker 3: way to eat ticks like Steve went out of his
Speaker 3: way to eat grapes, at least at least right now,
Speaker 3: there's no evidence of that. Okay, But I mean, there's
Speaker 3: so many great questions remaining on apossums that I'm hoping
Speaker 3: there is a future grad student out there who's going
Speaker 3: to really figure out exactly what impact apossums will have
Speaker 3: on tics and lime disease. So I think that's that's
Speaker 3: the next great research question with the possums.
Speaker 1: I'm about to quit my life and just go back
Speaker 1: to school to study them. So who knows, maybe me.
Speaker 1: Do other species of opossums have the cute, tiny little
Speaker 1: round ears also.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the Virginia possum, the Delphis virginiana, is one
Speaker 3: of about six to eight di Delphis species, and they
Speaker 3: all look very similar, so much so that sometimes they
Speaker 3: get misidentified, especially in areas in Central America where they overlap. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: sometimes the only way to really determine that is if
Speaker 3: you have their skull, So if you see a live animal,
Speaker 3: it's going to be pretty hard to determine what species.
Speaker 1: X ray vision.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: And do those a little cute ears serve an evolutionary purpose?
Speaker 3: I think it would help with with hearing, and it
Speaker 3: would help with thermal regulation. Most of their evolutionary history
Speaker 3: was in the neotropics, and so the bigger ears would
Speaker 3: help them dissipate heat faster. So that's why like jack
Speaker 3: rabbits in deserts, you're going to see those have huge ears, right,
Speaker 3: So similar thing, but wet, warm environment instead of a
Speaker 3: hot arid environment for the apossoms in the neotropics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes more sense. I think of them in
Speaker 1: colder climates, but yes, if they were in the neotropics
Speaker 1: and needed to cool off, that would make tons of sense.
Speaker 1: Is that similar as to why they have a big,
Speaker 1: pink naked rat tail.
Speaker 3: So they are arboreal, meaning they spend a lot of
Speaker 3: time in trees and they use that tail for balance.
Speaker 3: So you see a lot of pictures with them wrapping
Speaker 3: it around trees or branches, and you know, you want
Speaker 3: something that's full of friction if you're ar boreal, and
Speaker 3: if that limb is covered in hair, the hair is
Speaker 3: just gonna slough off. There is actually hair on their tail,
Speaker 3: it's just very fine and hard to see unless you're
Speaker 3: right up on the tail.
Speaker 1: Is it just like peach fuzz kind of or is
Speaker 1: it wiry?
Speaker 3: It's like wiry peach fuzz that's hot, but it is
Speaker 3: more fine than the like beautiful hair that their body
Speaker 3: is covered in.
Speaker 1: Oh, and there little cute claws and hands and feet
Speaker 1: those are also bare, so that they can scramble up trees.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean same thing with our hands and feet.
Speaker 3: I mean, evolutionarily for a while, we were in the
Speaker 3: trees as well, So same thing. We want grips, so
Speaker 3: we want fingerprints that add to the grip that. That's
Speaker 3: kind of why you see I guess going back to
Speaker 3: the tail, why you see their tail is kind of scaly.
Speaker 3: It adds to the grip.
Speaker 1: I looked into this, and apossums kind of have fingerprints.
Speaker 1: According to the nineteen sixty nine scientific paper titled Studies
Speaker 1: and Dermatoglyphs by doctor Sardul Singh, apossums have friction ridges
Speaker 1: and dermal grooves, and they're not the only marsupials who
Speaker 1: do so. Koala's fingerprints are similar enough to humans that
Speaker 1: the adages it could stump Australian detectives, but you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to wait until I do a ridgeology episode in
Speaker 1: the future, which is a thing. Also, I don't know
Speaker 1: how much beer Australian detectives drink, but either way, marsupials
Speaker 1: got a hand it to.
Speaker 3: Them, and like us, possums have an opposable toe.
Speaker 1: Ooh yeah, so that's huge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you look in terms of evolution primates and opossums, trees.
Speaker 1: We love them, love them. Gotta do some scrambling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and okay, let's talk the baby makers. The nipples in
Speaker 1: a ring. How many babies can they fit in that patch?
Speaker 1: Do they eat the babies? What's going on? Oh?
Speaker 3: Do they eat the babies?
Speaker 1: I Tasmanian devils apparently eat a number of their own babies,
Speaker 1: just like gummy bears. Ummy, and so I don't know. Okay,
Speaker 1: I have appossums to do that.
Speaker 3: Well, so that's I guess if we want to be
Speaker 3: really morbid. That is an evolutionary adaptation for marsupials where
Speaker 3: their gestation time is so short.
Speaker 1: Thirteen days, thirteen days in the hopper and they're out emerging,
Speaker 1: pink and squirmy and the size of a bee after
Speaker 1: less than two weeks of gestation. I have had contact
Speaker 1: lenses in my body for longer. I've probably had me
Speaker 1: nuggets in my body for longer, let's be honest. But
Speaker 1: mama possum gets knocked up and less than a fortnight later,
Speaker 1: she's like hit the door squarey worms, gonna see you
Speaker 1: on the other side of my vagina.
Speaker 3: It actually fits within her estress cycle, so basically your
Speaker 3: monthly cycle. It fits in, so she gets pregnant and
Speaker 3: has those babies within wow, the month or whatever her
Speaker 3: cycle is. And if it was not a good litter
Speaker 3: good in terms of number, or if she is really
Speaker 3: stressed and is not going to be able to eat
Speaker 3: the nutrients she needs to survive and also nurse her young,
Speaker 3: we think she can just stop the milk supply say okay,
Speaker 3: I want to do over, which would then be why
Speaker 3: she would eat her young. Basically she can abort that
Speaker 3: litter and then start over.
Speaker 1: Reproductive choice happens in nature all the time, and the
Speaker 1: odds are not always ever in their favor. Only one
Speaker 1: in ten opossums actually survive to reproductive age as things
Speaker 1: are pretty heated straight out of the gate and by
Speaker 1: gate once again, I mean a vagina. And how many
Speaker 1: nipples do opossums have?
Speaker 3: Typically thirteen, but there have been reports from nine to seventeen?
Speaker 1: Oh so many? Yeah? Is there usually one in the
Speaker 1: middle like a target, like a bullseye.
Speaker 3: For a possums, it's like a horseshoe, So one's in
Speaker 3: the middle but at the top. But there are marci
Speaker 3: fules with pouches where it is like a circle of
Speaker 3: nipples and then one in the middle.
Speaker 1: I just loved the idea that that's kind of like
Speaker 1: a disco dance circle where one person's just really having
Speaker 1: a spotlight, or that's like a seat of honor.
Speaker 3: Nursing in the middle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how long are they nursing for? And are the
Speaker 1: nipples in the pouch?
Speaker 3: The nipples are in the pouch for the Virginia possum,
Speaker 3: they will nurse. They have to be attached to mom
Speaker 3: for fifty days. So it it is a bit like
Speaker 3: a royal rumble to get to a teat looks good
Speaker 3: on drum because sometimes mom will have I've read up
Speaker 3: to twenty twenty two Joey's, but then she only has
Speaker 3: let's say she's the average, she only has thirteen teeth.
Speaker 3: So the first thirteen that make it and attach and
Speaker 3: start nursing are the thirteen that will survive. And they
Speaker 3: will stay attached for fifty days and be fully weaned
Speaker 3: around one hundred days.
Speaker 1: And then it's backtime.
Speaker 3: It's backtime starting around fifty days. I think it's just
Speaker 3: an extension of her pouch. She's like, okay, come on,
Speaker 3: come on, guys, I'm mama bus.
Speaker 1: I have so many questions from listeners, literally hundreds. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, yeah, I know ologites, don't fuck around. I
Speaker 1: will not make you answer them all, but we have
Speaker 1: sorted them into some categories. Can I do a lightning
Speaker 1: ground and we'll just see how many we can answer?
Speaker 1: Oh yes, Okay, Before we do, we're going to blast
Speaker 1: some cash at worthy causes. Each episode we donate to
Speaker 1: a charity of the ologists choosing, and this week it's
Speaker 1: going to actually the Apossumsociety us dot org, which was
Speaker 1: formed by a group of concerned citizens interested in rescuing
Speaker 1: orphaned and injured apossums. They have a network of volunteers
Speaker 1: that rehabilitate possums for return to the environment. There's more
Speaker 1: info at apossumsocietyus dot org. And then a second donation
Speaker 1: was made in doctor Lisa Walsh's name in memory of
Speaker 1: her dear youngest aunt passed away from polycystic kidney disease,
Speaker 1: which for more info on that, you can listen to
Speaker 1: the recent nephrologyp so do we talk about it? So
Speaker 1: we made a donation to Kidney Fund dot org in
Speaker 1: her memory. And Lisa's aunt was herself a lover of
Speaker 1: a possums, she told me and she once on a
Speaker 1: possum take a running jump onto a skunk, which is
Speaker 1: a magical thing to have witnessed. So those donations were
Speaker 1: made possible by sponsors of the show. Okay, shout out
Speaker 1: to patron and wildlife rehabber Elizabeth A. Gantenbein and Australian
Speaker 1: possum volunteer Jess And the first question was all about
Speaker 1: wee little babies mentioned by a lot of patrons like
Speaker 1: Anna Gusman, who asked what do I do if I
Speaker 1: happen to find a pinky baby possum in my yard?
Speaker 1: As well as first time question askers Demi Espinoza and
Speaker 1: Laura Mitten and wildlife enthusiast Denay Dejurnet as well as
Speaker 1: first time question asker Claire Baudreau wants to know what
Speaker 1: should you do if you find a baby possum on
Speaker 1: its own. It's happened to them a few times and
Speaker 1: it was wonderful, but they're not sure. Essentially, should we
Speaker 1: take it to an animal rehab center? Also, a ton
Speaker 1: of other people want to know, can you keep opossums's pets?
Speaker 3: Okay, I will answer the first question. I guess it
Speaker 3: depends on how large the abandoned Joey is trying to
Speaker 3: think of the right animal size for it, but basically.
Speaker 1: What about like an avocado, a canalope?
Speaker 3: I think like, if it's the size, if it's the
Speaker 3: length of like a banana, it's it's good. It's on
Speaker 3: its own.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: If it's the size of your hand, it's probably in
Speaker 3: need of being taken to a wildlife rehab center. If
Speaker 3: it is, yeah, about the size of an avocado. So
Speaker 3: if it is, if it doesn't have that long, lush
Speaker 3: hair that we're used to, if its eyes are closed,
Speaker 3: it definitely it needs to be placed in some sort
Speaker 3: of little blanket and brought to the rehab center because
Speaker 3: it is probably not able to fully keep itself warm
Speaker 3: like a normal warm blooded mammal.
Speaker 1: Yet, Okay, so a banana or bigger, it's good to go.
Speaker 1: And one possum rescue site use the guidance as big
Speaker 1: as a mouse coller rehabber, a rat.
Speaker 2: Let it be.
Speaker 1: Those ones are kind of like an eighteen year old
Speaker 1: who's just moved to New York City. You just gotta
Speaker 1: cross your fingers hope for the best. Now, for those
Speaker 1: of us who have dreams of waking up and sharing
Speaker 1: a pillow with a sleepy a possum who loves us back,
Speaker 1: such as patrons Shane Schandra Mason, Julie Dupree, Sana di
Speaker 1: Costo Pinto, who wrote, there is one lady on YouTube
Speaker 1: who has a pet possum that she appears to have kidnapped.
Speaker 1: Is having a pet possum problematic and patron violent Badger
Speaker 1: who asked, would you recommend possums as pets? How can
Speaker 1: we give them the beautiful life they deserve?
Speaker 3: In terms of can you keep an apossum? If you
Speaker 3: want to keep it apossum, you should become a certified
Speaker 3: wildlife rehabilitation person and you will be taking care of
Speaker 3: possums like Steve where they are deemed non releasable. Sometimes
Speaker 3: this is because of metabolic bone disease. Sometimes this is
Speaker 3: because they imprint on humans and so it wouldn't be
Speaker 3: safe to release them. I'm conflicted about keeping them captive.
Speaker 3: So for me, it's really if it is a non
Speaker 3: releasable animal, then it should go to someone who knows
Speaker 3: how to take care of it. As I pointed out,
Speaker 3: their diet is really complicated and you don't want to
Speaker 3: be making them more sick. And they will make a
Speaker 3: mess of your house because they want to nest, so
Speaker 3: that prehensile tail they will also use to wrap around
Speaker 3: newspaper or like a light blanket or anything that they
Speaker 3: can grab and bring to what they decide as they're
Speaker 3: den in your house. Also, I guess to be the
Speaker 3: Debbie Downer. In the wild, they live about a year
Speaker 3: and a half, so you would probably have your possum
Speaker 3: for maybe four years. The longest ever recorded, I think
Speaker 3: is about eight years.
Speaker 1: She says, a possum simply live fast and die young. Well,
Speaker 1: they live slowish, but can hall ass when they need
Speaker 1: to put they die young. And I know that we
Speaker 1: all wish that there was this idyllic island we could
Speaker 1: go to, filled with wild apossums who live forever and newsflesh.
Speaker 1: This heaven exists almost. Sapolo is a barrier island off
Speaker 1: the coast of Georgia. It boasts sand dunes and camping
Speaker 1: a pre Civil War plantation mansion. I do not want
Speaker 1: to tour, but a popular of apossums that has been
Speaker 1: there for nearly ten thousand years without any predators. So
Speaker 1: apparently Sapolo Island opossums live twice as long as other
Speaker 1: opossums in nature, and they enjoy high fertility rates all
Speaker 1: the way into the ripe old age of four. But yes,
Speaker 1: leave them on the islands. And as much as we
Speaker 1: love the long faced, screamy bundles of hair and teeth,
Speaker 1: the idea of keeping one as a pet is perhaps
Speaker 1: one that should remain on Fantasy Island.
Speaker 3: So I think they are best admired. But I think
Speaker 3: it would be really hard to have a captive opossum
Speaker 3: and fall in love with it and then lose it
Speaker 3: so quickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, understood. A few people. Alison my Sing, Vanessa Geira,
Speaker 1: and Abraham Livingston all ask questions that I did not
Speaker 1: know this was a thing. They want to know. Well,
Speaker 1: Allison wants to know. I'm obsessed. My question is why
Speaker 1: are they the greatest? Their immune to rattlesnake venom? Is
Speaker 1: this true? All three asked about their role in venom antidotes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they are immune to rattlesnake venom. I know
Speaker 3: that there's a grad student at the University of Minnesota
Speaker 3: looking into it, so she would be a great follow up.
Speaker 1: Okay, I look this up and shout out to venom
Speaker 1: researcher and now doctor Danielle Drabek, who writes on her
Speaker 1: website quote, members of the marsupial family Didelphidi are not
Speaker 1: only resistant to snake venom, but also attack and eat
Speaker 1: pit vipers with impunity, exhibiting no behavioral precautions while subduing
Speaker 1: these dangerous snakes. My research, she continues, has revealed that
Speaker 1: they have evolved a mammalian blood protein vWF von wildbrand
Speaker 1: factor which is resistant to coagulation disruption by these and
Speaker 1: similar venoms. End quote. So they're superheroes just lurch around
Speaker 1: your garbage. So what does this mean? Are they going
Speaker 1: to take over the world? Well, they may help thousands
Speaker 1: of people who are bitten by snakes in remote regions
Speaker 1: every year who can't afford super expensive anti venom. And
Speaker 1: a team at San Jose State University in doctor Claire
Speaker 1: Komive's lab is also studying this stuff and looking into
Speaker 1: synthesizing anti venom from opossum blood proteins. And I just
Speaker 1: want to high five their tiny pink witchy little fingers.
Speaker 1: The opossums, not the scientist tes Hebert wants to know,
Speaker 1: not a question. I just think it's important to bring
Speaker 1: up possum penis. Do they have weird dogs?
Speaker 3: I mean, only if you think a bifurcated penis is weird.
Speaker 3: Touche Didelphi day. Their family is named to it. It's
Speaker 3: named for two lombs, so in marsupials, the genitalia is doubled,
Speaker 3: so to uteri. Two vaginas and a bifurcated p Yes.
Speaker 1: Wow, there you go. I mean that makes sense. It's
Speaker 1: a tool for every job, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and what's weirder? For female apossums when they are
Speaker 3: ready to give birth, they don't want the two vaginas competing,
Speaker 3: so they form this pseudo vaginal canal that then closes
Speaker 3: back up. Another scientist on Twitter called it a space
Speaker 3: portal vagina where it just like it appears and then disappears.
Speaker 1: Yes, just in case you thought they could not get weirder.
Speaker 1: Female apossums, which are called jill's and male's jacks, all
Speaker 1: have kloacas, which you may remember as the one hole
Speaker 1: to rule them all from birds and reptile spots. But yes,
Speaker 1: a jill's double vage grows a third shoot down which
Speaker 1: her tiny clawed baby's travel. They shed their weird baby talents.
Speaker 1: They find a nip and then and they don't nurse.
Speaker 1: They attach. Once the nipple is in a possa mouth,
Speaker 1: it gets long, swells and sticks down their gullet. It's
Speaker 1: down their throat. It's like a feeding tube made of
Speaker 1: a swollen nip. Until they're old enough to just bounce
Speaker 1: and hitch rides, surfing on mama's spine. Speaking of hitches,
Speaker 1: there must be one to be such vessels of alien mystique.
Speaker 1: They must have drawbacks. Are they crawling with disease? Rabies? Maybe? Patrons?
Speaker 1: Demi Espinoza, Anti c Frangi, Sydney Bowers, Jackie Widra, First
Speaker 1: time question asker Kate Diel, Harrissa Liel, Savannah McGuire, Diana Teeter,
Speaker 1: and wildlife rehabber Andrea Devlin asked us to address the
Speaker 1: rabies question. Brie Wilson and many other listeners said, I
Speaker 1: read somewhere that American opossums are immune to rabies? Is
Speaker 1: this true? And is that because of body temperature?
Speaker 3: It is true? With an asterisk, and yes, it is
Speaker 3: because they have a lower body temperature, it's not easy
Speaker 3: for them to get raybies. Although there are about five
Speaker 3: to ten cases of apossums that have been found with rabies,
Speaker 3: most of them in this area of New York where
Speaker 3: they think the rabies has become aerosolized because of something
Speaker 3: with the water, like the way that their bodies of
Speaker 3: water work. And so I think if you're in an
Speaker 3: area with aerosolized rabies, you have bigger things to worry
Speaker 3: about than a possum with rabies or so it's important
Speaker 3: to note if you see an aposum out in the daytime,
Speaker 3: it is not because they have rabies. They are nocturnal,
Speaker 3: but they do what they want. You know, if they
Speaker 3: are hungry, they're gonna go forage or I've seen moms
Speaker 3: moving around from dead to den. Also, they do seem
Speaker 3: to be more active in the daytime during winter because
Speaker 3: that's when it's going to be warmest, that's when it's
Speaker 3: going to be most comfortable for them to get around.
Speaker 3: Maybe the snow's melted, or they're just impatient. They want
Speaker 3: to go eat because it's been a few days since
Speaker 3: they've eaten. They have a very slow metabolic rate. So
Speaker 3: if they skip a day of foraging, that would be
Speaker 3: like not eating a mouse for them. And if the
Speaker 3: winter is really bad, if the condition is really bad,
Speaker 3: they they just stay inside. They stay inside their den
Speaker 3: and they wait it out and they hope for it
Speaker 3: to get better. They can lose up to forty percent
Speaker 3: of their body mass in the winter.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, those little skinny, good little guys,
Speaker 1: those scrawny little passa.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so sad, extreme weight loss. They could write a
Speaker 3: book about it.
Speaker 1: Biohacking, intermittent fasting, Yeah, they're on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Becky the sassy seagrass scientist had a great question. Wanted
Speaker 1: to know where do pouch babies poop? Is it real
Speaker 1: gross in there?
Speaker 3: I believe that they are doing what they need to
Speaker 3: do in mom's pouch. But Mom, as long as she
Speaker 3: is healthy, she is going to be actively cleaning that pouch.
Speaker 3: There's also evidence from other marsupials. This is because Australian
Speaker 3: marsupials get so much more attention, both from the general
Speaker 3: public but also from scientists, because you know, if you're
Speaker 3: an Australian biologist, why wouldn't you research these marsupials. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of anti microbials in the pouch. The Tasmanian
Speaker 3: Devil milk seems to be able to kill marsa. So
Speaker 3: there's a lot going on in terms of keeping these
Speaker 3: babies safe that we are really just now starting to
Speaker 3: scratch the surface at because in recent year the question
Speaker 3: has been microbiomes, and so people are starting to look
Speaker 3: at the microbiomes of pouches. So if a mom a
Speaker 3: possum comes in to a wildlife rehab center, they can
Speaker 3: basically gauge her health by seeing how clean her pouch is.
Speaker 3: The pouch is only going to be dirty if she's
Speaker 3: really not doing well.
Speaker 1: Same with my house, let's be perfectly honest.
Speaker 3: And again that goes back to if either the resources
Speaker 3: are really low or if she's not feeling well energetically,
Speaker 3: it is not worth her time to keep a litter
Speaker 3: going because she has to spend so much time and
Speaker 3: energy in terms of not only making the milk, but
Speaker 3: keeping that pouch clean and safe. Because all marsupials are
Speaker 3: born as neonates, they are very underdeveloped. They're not able
Speaker 3: to throw a regulate for themselves, so it's really up
Speaker 3: to mom to keep them safe and let them grow
Speaker 3: inside her pouch. Although I want to point out about
Speaker 3: four percent of marsupials don't have pouches.
Speaker 1: What, yeah, really, what's going on there?
Speaker 3: So instead they just have these little flaps of skin
Speaker 3: and the young just hang off of mom. So they
Speaker 3: tend to be smaller species. Again, it's a it's an
Speaker 3: evolutionary question that is not really being looked at because, yeah,
Speaker 3: marsupials are just so understudied, at least in my opinion.
Speaker 3: I'm not biased at all, right.
Speaker 1: Ah, of course not no.
Speaker 3: But so I think, yeah, I think it has something
Speaker 3: to do with if you're into humidive an environment, you
Speaker 3: would become unable to regulate it and keep let's say,
Speaker 3: fungus from growing inside of it. So that's my completely
Speaker 3: naive hypothesis about why some of these species lost the pouch.
Speaker 1: And now I want to look at pictures of them
Speaker 1: hanging off of a skin flap. It sounds gymnastic in
Speaker 1: a way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it just looks like little jellybeans are growing on
Speaker 3: her belly.
Speaker 1: There's so many people who had questions about feigning their
Speaker 1: own death looking at you, Sarah mas Chris Brewers, Sonya Solomonson,
Speaker 1: m Case, Anthony Willis first time question asker Chandler Witherington,
Speaker 1: Sophie duncan Sebastian Pepinot, Brena Wing, and Janella Lindauer Starr
Speaker 1: wanted to know is there an easy way to tell
Speaker 1: when apossum is dead versus just playing dead? And should
Speaker 1: you move them to a safe space if they're playing
Speaker 1: dead in a dangerous place, but deserve respiratory and heart
Speaker 1: rate decrease what's going on there.
Speaker 3: In order to tell the difference. So this this was
Speaker 3: something I was nervous about when I first started collecting roadkill,
Speaker 3: because you know, if it was a really fresh, freshly
Speaker 3: dead pass im, how would I know? Most likely if
Speaker 3: they are dead. If they're freshly dead, like if you
Speaker 3: can't tell, there will probably be blood. Or the other
Speaker 3: way to tell is if they don't smell, then they
Speaker 3: are dead. Really, if they have feigned death, most likely
Speaker 3: they have excreted their annal glands because they are trying
Speaker 3: to convince this predator that has been running after them
Speaker 3: a I'm no longer running, so I'm no longer prey.
Speaker 3: But also be look at how gross and stinky I am.
Speaker 3: You don't want to eat me?
Speaker 1: Does it work?
Speaker 3: I mean, it seems to work at least. We only
Speaker 3: really know about how well it works for dog attacks,
Speaker 3: and it tends to work right, especially because dogs just
Speaker 3: want to chase after things that are running and then
Speaker 3: they're like, oh, you're not fun anymore. In terms of
Speaker 3: not working, it wouldn't work for birds of prey because
Speaker 3: they're not going to have a sense of smell and
Speaker 3: they are actually going after to possum too to eat it,
Speaker 3: and apparently younger possums are not as quick at faining death,
Speaker 3: so they would be grabbed by the bird of prey,
Speaker 3: which are the size possums that these birds would typically
Speaker 3: be going after anyway.
Speaker 1: Okay, remember ninety percent of possums each shit and go
Speaker 1: to heaven before they even hit puberty. Their only defense
Speaker 1: mechanisms are scrambling up a fence, opening their mouths as
Speaker 1: if they would bite you but they typically don't, or
Speaker 1: dramatically freezing, drooling, and shitting themselves.
Speaker 3: The issue is if you touch it, it will prolong
Speaker 3: how how long they stay dead, stay faining death. They
Speaker 3: are not actually rising from the dead when they recover
Speaker 3: from this, but brain activity, heart rate, it's not changing.
Speaker 3: So it's similar to fainting for us where you know,
Speaker 3: sometimes it'll take us a little bit to recover. Maybe
Speaker 3: possums take a little longer. I've seen a video where
Speaker 3: someone forced the possum to feign death. They and then
Speaker 3: they handled it. Please don't do that. Don't do that
Speaker 3: to wildlife.
Speaker 1: They sound like just very good lesbians in a way. Yes,
Speaker 1: if they're able to convince people, can we talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about their screaming capabilities. We had a few
Speaker 1: people ask, such as Janello lindau Er, Alec Rundeman, Savannah Holloman,
Speaker 1: and for example, Nico Price wants to know if there
Speaker 1: are any cultures with awesome lore surrounding these adorable, drooling, hissing,
Speaker 1: screamy voice. Good name for them, but is there screaming?
Speaker 1: Are they hissing? Are they screaming?
Speaker 3: It's typically hissing. The babies will have this high pitched
Speaker 3: squeak which is kind of heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking for me
Speaker 3: because I've only heard it from a road killed mom.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I guess if you ever come across a
Speaker 3: road killed a possum, check for babies and then bring
Speaker 3: the babies to your local wildlife rehaber.
Speaker 1: What about lare.
Speaker 3: I've tried to look for lare and I have not
Speaker 3: been able to really find much. So that's a great question.
Speaker 3: And if there are any listeners who know of some,
Speaker 3: I would I would love to hear about it. But
Speaker 3: mostly what I've heard is, you know the the jokes
Speaker 3: about how to cook opossums, and I don't want that cookbook. Thanks.
Speaker 1: People always ask if you hear any jokes about a
Speaker 1: possums or if you make any jokes about a possums
Speaker 1: being in the field.
Speaker 3: Mmm. I mostly make the joke that before I give
Speaker 3: a big presentation, if I'm really scared, I can just
Speaker 3: play possum and faint in front of the audience. Right,
Speaker 3: just channel my channel, my study species and faint. Maybe
Speaker 3: they would go away. But my stage freight has gotten
Speaker 3: a little better, so no more playing possum for me.
Speaker 1: Is it a bittersweet at all to be called upon
Speaker 1: to publicly discuss your study species so much?
Speaker 2: Do you enjoy talking about it?
Speaker 3: I really do enjoy talking about it. I'm passionate about education,
Speaker 3: and so I think I'm very lucky to have worked
Speaker 3: on an animal that people recognize and that people want
Speaker 3: to talk to me about, and that has been gaining
Speaker 3: internet fame since I started. So I started my master's
Speaker 3: program in twenty twelve, and then the last few years
Speaker 3: of my PhD, they were starting to become memes, like
Speaker 3: popular memes that I would see online, and it was
Speaker 3: just it was really kind of surreal to see them
Speaker 3: gain popularity as I moved forward in my studies. R J.
Speaker 1: Deutsche actually was a listener who wrote in and said,
Speaker 1: not a real question, but like, why are they so
Speaker 1: cute and memeable? I wonder what the what know your
Speaker 1: meme has to say about the increasing popularity of possums
Speaker 1: of opossums.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it helps that they're really resilient and
Speaker 3: they're around humans a lot. But they're they're nocturnal, so
Speaker 3: we don't see them a lot. So when we do
Speaker 3: see them, we take a picture of them and their
Speaker 3: defensive stance of you know, opening their mouth really wide
Speaker 3: and hissing. It is very compelling.
Speaker 1: And the cutest part about all those pictures of a
Speaker 1: beetlejuice look and open mouthed to the monster is that
Speaker 1: they're just holding their jaws open, not to gnaw your
Speaker 1: hand until it's a stringy stump, but just to make
Speaker 1: you go, oh, I don't believe you're so ugly? So
Speaker 1: when did we see ourselves in this animal and begin
Speaker 1: to fall in love with them? On the internet? While
Speaker 1: I asked the website No Your Meme to dish some
Speaker 1: chronology and they delivered. Turns out that in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: a Twitter account launched dedicated to possum memes called scram
Speaker 1: at own ass, and the rest is history. I followed
Speaker 1: it for years. It's also history, including that account, which
Speaker 1: seems defunct. It breaks my heart. I miss it so
Speaker 1: much because, just like the possum, all of us have
Speaker 1: at one point curled up defensively, unhinged our face and
Speaker 1: really just let our ass have it for no reason
Speaker 1: at all. Screaming at own ass is something I think
Speaker 1: we all feel we could relate to exactly. That was
Speaker 1: one question we got, probably the most common question. We
Speaker 1: got so many patrons, so many but namely Rdar the Cat,
Speaker 1: Madison Graham's and A Guzman, Jenna A and Grace Robosho
Speaker 1: wanted to know, essentially, why are they so simultaneously ugly
Speaker 1: and cute and why can't more people appreciate them? Why
Speaker 1: do you think like Seguane DNA wants to know, why
Speaker 1: are they so ugly? It's so dark? Cute? That was
Speaker 1: verbiage that so many listeners had. But yeah, how is
Speaker 1: it possible that they look like a giant rat but
Speaker 1: also a teddy bear?
Speaker 3: Just luck of the draw in terms of where evolution
Speaker 3: led them. So I think that the biggest issue is
Speaker 3: their naked tail, which hopefully your listeners now know isn't
Speaker 3: actually naked, and the shape of their snout. So marsubules
Speaker 3: have narrow brain cases, and so it's this narrow but
Speaker 3: long snout. I think that makes them cute yet weird
Speaker 3: at the same time. And with the really big eyes
Speaker 3: and the big ears, you know, we equate those with
Speaker 3: things like teddy bears.
Speaker 1: That's a very good point. Richard Swar and Lauren want
Speaker 1: to know, how do I make them be my best friend?
Speaker 1: Is that something? Probably wildlife rehabbers would say, just admire
Speaker 1: from Afar.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say admire from afar. Set up a
Speaker 3: I think it's like a one hundred and ten dollars
Speaker 3: at Cabela's a trail cam. So if you really love
Speaker 3: a possums, and if you live in an area where
Speaker 3: you have any backyard set up a trail cam. So
Speaker 3: not everyone can do this, but otherwise, you know, start
Speaker 3: making memes for possums, set up a trail cam to
Speaker 3: see who's stopping by your backyard. Yeah, don't. I don't
Speaker 3: recommend you know, setting out food to attract wildlife, because
Speaker 3: you're going to end up with wildlife that you don't want.
Speaker 3: Or you know, wildlife are carriers of diseases. Sometimes that
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that we should do anything bad to them,
Speaker 3: but we shouldn't be trying to attract them to where
Speaker 3: they could then spread it to us or domestic animals.
Speaker 1: Also side note, you got horses, maybe don't let opossums
Speaker 1: shack up in your barn because they can be carriers
Speaker 1: of EPM, which is equine protozol milo encephalitis. So you
Speaker 1: don't want opossums to pooh near the horse's food or water.
Speaker 1: I mean, you never want an opossum to pooh near
Speaker 1: anyone's food or water because it's pooh. But definitely you
Speaker 1: don't want it if you have horses.
Speaker 3: So if you want to be their best friend, honestly,
Speaker 3: the best way would be to find a wildlife rehab
Speaker 3: center and see if you can volunteer there. They always
Speaker 3: need more hands, especially in the spring when all the
Speaker 3: orphaned babies are brought in. No.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great idea. I think I just found
Speaker 1: my new volunteer gig. Oh yeah, Matt Thompson is curious
Speaker 1: if you've seen the Majesty of the Possum Lady. This
Speaker 1: may be the.
Speaker 2: Most important video you will ever see.
Speaker 3: Are you concerned about the mental health of your apossum?
Speaker 1: Well you should be, Jet Spelvin, I think yes. Any
Speaker 1: thoughts do you want to be friends with her?
Speaker 2: Do you approve?
Speaker 1: Do you disapprove?
Speaker 3: I'm all about being weird and being weird with possums,
Speaker 3: and if her mystique is helping to propel a possums
Speaker 3: to their popularity.
Speaker 1: Awesome, awesome possum.
Speaker 3: Awesome possum.
Speaker 1: Ugh look her up and fall down a wormhole into
Speaker 1: a universe where a perfectly quaffed older woman who looks
Speaker 1: like Audrey Hepburn stands in a poorly lit apartment just
Speaker 1: thump in the boncos to her rescue possums. Oh it's wonderful.
Speaker 1: She also very wisely delivers the psa that possums belong
Speaker 1: in the wild unless they are of the Steve variety.
Speaker 1: So she knows what's up. I would like to be her.
Speaker 1: Any documentaries or movies get it really right or really wrong?
Speaker 3: Hmm, that is a good question. I do want to say.
Speaker 3: I guess I love Parks and Rec and they got
Speaker 3: it right in that there would be possums sometimes on
Speaker 3: golf courses and they would be out in the daytime,
Speaker 3: and unfortunately they are often vilified because we think that
Speaker 3: they are going after our pets. That would be rare,
Speaker 3: and any animal that is attacked will defend itself. So
Speaker 3: I don't know if the possum and Parks and Rec
Speaker 3: actually bit the Mayor's dog.
Speaker 1: Am I sure the possum we caught is Fairway Frank, Yes, Am,
Speaker 1: I quite sure.
Speaker 3: No, So I don't think so that's the one that
Speaker 3: comes to mind in terms of possums in the media. Fairway, Frank. Sorry,
Speaker 3: I just remember Fairway Frank. Just yes, I just remembered what.
Speaker 1: Sucks the most about possums? What sucks the most about
Speaker 1: your work with possums? Feel free to get negative. It
Speaker 1: can be anything.
Speaker 3: I mean, so, possums are nomadic and they're solitary, and
Speaker 3: so trying to ask genetic questions doesn't always work because
Speaker 3: they're not like picking a habitat and staying where. They're
Speaker 3: not staying in one place. They're moving around a lot.
Speaker 3: So the last chapter of my dissertation was like, what
Speaker 3: does the genetics of the possum look like across temperate
Speaker 3: North America? Oh? It's a mess. It's a mess. So
Speaker 3: not a great animal to do that research on. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's interesting because they're such a mess, but it's also
Speaker 3: bittersweet because there are so many questions that are still
Speaker 3: unanswered about a possums. I hope that chats like this
Speaker 3: can can spark curiosity in the next a possum scientist.
Speaker 1: What about the thing? Last question? I always ask, what
Speaker 1: about the thing that you love the most about apossums?
Speaker 3: Oh? That that's such a hard question. I can't So
Speaker 3: I already told the story about Steve. I really, I
Speaker 3: really like that story. I think that the young apossums
Speaker 3: are just adorable, and I like that there was this
Speaker 3: fascination with a possums even like one hundred years ago.
Speaker 3: So are you out in California? We are?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Where?
Speaker 1: Apparently we didn't have apossums here until eighteen ninety three. Great,
Speaker 1: so we brought him over.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I love that people from Tennessee were like,
Speaker 3: we're moving out west, Honey, I'm gonna miss Tennessee. Let's
Speaker 3: bring some possums. Yeah. And then at one point, so
Speaker 3: this might have been a different event, but people raising
Speaker 3: them for in California, they didn't build the pen well
Speaker 3: enough and the possums broke free. So I love the
Speaker 3: relationship between humans and apossums. Sometimes it's not good, yeah,
Speaker 3: sometimes they're vilified, But when they're appreciated or when they
Speaker 3: one up the person who was trying to keep them
Speaker 3: in a pen, I really like those stories.
Speaker 1: I've as a champion for possums. I think celebrating their
Speaker 1: victories is absolutely worthwhile in human nature. Yeah, so ask
Speaker 1: smart people bumbling questions and celebrate the victory of others.
Speaker 1: Now you can hear more about doctor Lisa Walsh's work
Speaker 1: on Twitter. She is at Spouts of Facts and it'll
Speaker 1: be linked in the show notes, alongside links to the
Speaker 1: charities and the sponsors and tons more at aliwar dot com,
Speaker 1: slash ologies, slash Opossumology. We are friendable on Twitter at
Speaker 1: ologies or at ali ward with one l same handles
Speaker 1: on Instagram and please trust that our feeds will be
Speaker 1: flooded with possum memes all week long. It's a torrent
Speaker 1: of them. Oh I'm excited. Thank you Aaron Talbert for
Speaker 1: adminting the Ologies podcast Facebook group. Hello to all the
Speaker 1: redditors on the Ology suborddday. Ologi'es merch is available at
Speaker 1: ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you Shannon Feldts, Bonny Dutch, and
Speaker 1: Susan Hale for helping manage that. Thank you Susan and
Speaker 1: Noel Dilworth for helping behind the scenes with ologies biz.
Speaker 1: Thank you Emily White of the transcription service The Wordery
Speaker 1: for turning around transcripts so fast. Available for free on
Speaker 1: my website to anyone who could need them or use them.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Caleb Patten for all the bleeping. Thank
Speaker 1: you to Kelly Dwyer for a website design. She's available
Speaker 1: if you need her. She is linked in the show notes.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Stephen Ray Morris and Zegrodriguez Thomas for working
Speaker 1: on Smologies. More episodes coming soon, And of course the
Speaker 1: human critter who fits all the pieces together, Jared Sleeper
Speaker 1: for me get these up on time every week despite
Speaker 1: juggling a lot lately. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music
Speaker 1: and he is in a very good band called Islands.
Speaker 1: If you stick around until the end, you know that
Speaker 1: I burden and divulge a secret this week. The secret
Speaker 1: is that I shot my shot. I reached out to
Speaker 1: the office of mister doctor Fauci, and he is considering
Speaker 1: an appearance sonologies. I'm very nervous. I just immediately began sweating,
Speaker 1: telling you that across your little possum fingers. Everyone, we'll
Speaker 1: see what happens. Also, I farted while recording the interview,
Speaker 1: and I really hope the guest didn't here, and I
Speaker 1: had to ask dear to cut it out. Okay, we're bye, Hackadermatology, homeology,
Speaker 1: rypdo zoology, lithologynology, meteorology, pathology, napology, seriologyology.
Speaker 3: Oh, possum, this is not like he's Irish.