What is this animal? It’s a little bit terrifying.
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Looks like a possum… do not fear the possum, they eat about a billion ticks!
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Oh yeah it’s a possum. They’re just scream-hissers, they’re great for the ecosystem and very cool little monkey rats.
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I mean, yay for being good for the ecosystem, but I still don’t want to run into one.
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Fair!
They didn’t have them here until recently. Definitely terrified me the first time
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I think in the US they’re great for the Ecosystem, but IIRC, they’re wreaking havoc on NZ ecosystem since they’re the largest predators there. Possums: New Zealand animal pests and threats
When we were there, one of the sustainable clothing industries was possum wool, which is incredibly soft and warm.
weird facts.
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Huh. The more ya know
But NZ has the Australian possums, not the US ones. Aussie ones are cuter, but yes, very detrimental to the NZ ecosystems (even while certain species die out in their normal Aussie ecosystems, sigh).
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Oh. Technically they are opossum. Opossum and possum are actually different animals (sorry I was confusing).
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I am not sure how or if US possums are related to AU possums…
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They’re not at all related. 
(ETA: I guess I shouldn’t say not at all. Both are marsupials (the opossum is the only marsupial native to the North America) but belong to completely different orders and are evolutionarily distant.)
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That makes sense.
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The real question might be, why is the “o” silent in opossum? 
ETA: I have just gone down a rabbit hole (possibly a possum hole that claims that you pronounce the “o”. But like, I grew up in an area with abundant opossum, and can definitively say we never pronounce the “o”, like, ever. One source said because it would be awkward to say “a opossum” (although um, it would be “an opossum” so I cry foul) and there is virtually no difference between “a possum” and “opossum”. 
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where I grew up, first in Memphis, TN and then in southern Louisiana, I definitely heard it pronounced “OH possum” all the time, emphasis on the oh…but now that I live in the west, it’s definitely “a possum”
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The Australian possum is definitely detrimental to my vegetable garden ecosystem. I’m talking about the common brush tail. Not it’s cool smaller shy friend the ring tail possum.
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The NZ possum situation reminds me of the end of the Simpsons go to Australia episode.
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Well I just went down a rabbit hole…
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Maybe we should start spelling it (o)possum. 
My favorite bit:
But there’s more to this story. So far, we’ve only addressed the fact that the Virginia opossum, a marsupial that makes its home in large swaths of North America, is referred to with both possum and opossum . But there’s another group of marsupials out there in the world that is also referred to with both terms. Yes, the chiefly arboreal marsupial mammals of Australia and New Guinea are referred to by those who live there as possums , or sometimes opossums . In this case, getting technical about things can help: the term phalanger accurately refers to these creature of Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea, and islands west to Celebes and east to the Solomons.
Lord almighty.
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