What is the difference between possum and opossum

What to Know Both possum and opossum correctly refer to the Virginia opossum frequently seen in North America. More Words At Play. Merriam-Webster's Words of the Week - Oct. Time Traveler. Love words? Need even more definitions? Ask the Editors 'Everyday' vs. What Is 'Semantic Bleaching'? How 'literally' can mean "figuratively". Literally How to use a word that literally drives some pe Is Singular 'They' a Better Choice?

The awkward case of 'his or her'. Take the quiz. A hundred and sixty years later, a British naturalist named Joseph Banks joined captain James Cook on his journey to Australia and borrowed the name opossum to describe some of the vaguely similar marsupials he encountered there. No idea.

Why do so many Americans use the word possum when they mean opossum? Still no idea. But it seems to be a pretty old confusion here. If you want to be technically correct, you should use the word opossum when referring to the animals in the Americas, and use the word possum when referring to the animals in Australia and nearby islands. Australian possums do not exhibit this defensive behavior!

Is the O at the beginning of opossum silent? The O is not silent. The word Opossum can refer to any one of more than different species of marsupial animals in the superorder Ameridelphia. They are found in North, Central, and South America. While scientists would generally say that shrew opossums are not technically opossums and most certainly not shrews the name opossum is still commonly used to describe them.

The only opossum found in the United States is the Virginia Opossum. But as you move southward, the diversity of opossums starts to rise dramatically! Like their Australian counterparts, all opossums are marsupials, meaning they give birth to tiny undeveloped young who must crawl to a pouch and latch on to a nipple in order to survive.

The catch is, not every marsupial actually has a pouch. There is an interesting diversity of creatures in the opossum family, including one species adapted to water! The Yapok or Water Opossum is the only aquatic marsupial and has some unusual features including webbed back feet and a waterproof pouch! Here are some pics and info on the Yapok on Animal Diversity Web. The family Didelphidae can be divided into various tribes, and subfamilies.

There are 19 genera containing 96 living species of opossums according to one classification system. I have listed them here, as well as the number of species within each genus, in the following table. The name possum can refer to any of 67 marsupial species in the suborder Phalangeriformes found in Australia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea.

While technically, any member of this suborder is considered a possum , many of them are more commonly referred to as cuscuses 22 species in the Phalangeridae family , gliders 6 species in the Petauridae family, 1 in Pseudocheiridae family, 1 in Acrobatidae family , or tricks 3 of the 4 species in the genus Dactylopsila.

Do you want to see possums in the wild? This family contains 11 species. The opossum received its name in the early s from Captain John Smith of the Jamestown colony in Virginia.

This truncation of the original term may explain why many people are surprised to learn that opossum and possum are in fact two very different marsupial species of the arboreal kind. Possessing a furry tail, the true possum belongs to the Phalangeridae family within the Marsupialia order and is primarily found in New Guinea, Australia, Indonesia and other islands in the Pacific region.

There are many varieties of possums, including Gliders and Cuscus, while the opossum is a more limited species. Both the possum and the opossum are nocturnal, nomadic omnivores and live on an expansive diet that includes insects, frogs, birds, snakes and fruits. The possum is primarily gray in color.