They Don't Play Possum

Time for a lesson in the importance of proper spelling, and the dangers of abbreviation.

If you are, like the majority of the people who pass through this bit of webspace, North American, the word possum brings to mind something fairly specific.  Namely, the Virginia Opossum.

Not a rodent, otherwise I'd call it an R.O.U.S.

It's the largest marsupial North of the tropic of cancer, and it basically combines the some of the worst elements of a rat and a raccoon.  Which isn't to say it's not a fascinating animal, but it's a scavenger and it's big enough to be scary.  Trust me.  When one of these bastards is standing in front of you, hissing and baring those teeth at you, you give it a wide berth.

Assuming you forget about the whole
"playing possum" thing.  I did.

Now, this is where the whole 'proper spelling' thing kicks in.  That little beast shown above isn't a possum. A proper possum is named after the similarities to the opossum, but they are, generally speaking, far less disturbing.  Possums (as opposed to opossums) are native to Australasia.  They're marsupials too, and like the opossums, they're generally nocturnal and at least partially tree-dwelling.  Unlike the opossum though, the possums don't pretend to be dead when cornered, and more importantly, they don't tend to look like giant rats.

Heck, you could make a
stuffed animal based off that!

So, what's the etymology behind all this?  Well, it goes back to the Virginia opossum, whose name comes from the Algonquin Indian name for them, aposoum, which meant "white beast."  A pretty fitting name, if you ask me.  Like pretty much everything that was taken from a Native American word, it got bastardized and we call them opossums now.  When the marsupials of Australasia were discovered later on, the more opossum-like ones (sub-order Phalaneriformes) were dubbed possums.  They're not very closely related (think manatee to hippo), but they look a lot alike, so they're named similarly.

Playing possum: Not what a possum will do if you get too close.

I couldn't find a video of someone threatening an actual possum, but I did find lots of video of people feeding them. Here's one that's got a momma possum with her baby.

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Sources:
Opossum image taken from FIPS blog, image originally from, and owned by 24/7 Wildlife
Opossum playing dead image taken from some crackpot's webpage
Common brushtail possum image taken from the city of Holdfast website
Wikipedia articles on  possums and opossums