Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Members of the Caluromyinae are essentially frugivorous; whereas the lutrine opossum and Patagonian opossum primarily feed on other animals. [22] The water opossum or yapok (Chironectes minimus) is particularly unusual, as it is the only living semi-aquatic marsupial, using its webbed hindlimbs to dive in search of freshwater mollusks and ...
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 ]
Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana). Didelphimorphia is an order of marsupial mammals.Members of this order are called didelphimorphs, or opossums.They are primarily found in South America, though some are found in Central America and Mexico and one, the Virginia opossum, ranges into the United States and Canada.
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 ...
Didelphimorphia is the order of common opossums of the Western Hemisphere. Opossums probably diverged from the basic South American marsupials in the late Cretaceous or early Paleocene . They are small to medium-sized marsupials, about the size of a large house cat , with a long snout and prehensile tail.
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]
The largest species, the Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana), is the only marsupial to be found in North America, north of Mexico. The Virginia opossum has opposable toes on their two back feet. One of the synapomorphies of this genus is the hypertrophied spinous processes of the cervical vertebrae, which also interlock. As a result, this ...
Some sources call this subfamily the "American opossums", [2] [6] while others use that term for the whole family of opossums, Didelphidae. [1] The term may be redundant, though, since all opossums are native to the Americas, while their distant Australian taxonomic relatives, in the suborder Phalangeriformes are referred to as possums in ...