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The sugar glider (Petaurus breviceps) is a small, omnivorous, arboreal, and nocturnal gliding possum.The common name refers to its predilection for sugary foods such as sap and nectar and its ability to glide through the air, much like a flying squirrel. [8]
Like some similar species, they have a large cecum to ferment this highly fibrous food and extract as much nutrition as possible. Their teeth, though, are not as highly adapted to this diet as other possums, and they also eat fruit, and even some invertebrates.
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.
The species are commonly known as possums, opossums, [3] gliders, and cuscus. The common name "(o)possum" for various Phalangeriformes species derives from the creatures' resemblance to the opossums of the Americas (the term comes from Powhatan language aposoum "white animal", from Proto-Algonquian * wa·p-aʔɬemwa "white dog"). [ 4 ]
Insects such as grasshoppers, crickets, and beetles make up the bulk of the animal foods eaten by opossums. [27] It has been stated that opossums eat up to 95% of the ticks they encounter [25] [28] and may eat up to 5,000 ticks per season, helping to prevent the spread of tick-born illnesses, including Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted ...
The term "opossum" is used to refer to American species (though "possum" is a common abbreviation), while similar Australian species are properly called "possums". Isolated petrosals of Djarthia murgonensis , Australia's oldest marsupial fossils [ 71 ] Dentition of the herbivorous eastern grey kangaroo, as illustrated in Knight's Sketches in ...
Cuscus (/ ˈ k ʌ s k ʌ s / or / ˈ k uː s k uː s /) is the common name generally given to the species within the four genera of Australasian possum [1] of the family Phalangeridae with the most tropical distribution: Ailurops; Phalanger; Spilocuscus; Strigocuscus
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. Like most possums, the common ...