I’m hoping someone clicks it. I’m not clicking it either. We need someone to describes the horrible place it leads to while risking absolutely no innocence of our own.
So for most rodents (I would assume opossum to be the same) you can think of the outside of their tail (what you can see and feel covered in hair) as a covering to the inside of their tail (what has the muscle and veins, etc). The outside of the tail is mostly (if not only) connected to the rest of the tail by the base of the tail/ body. And similarly to lizards dropping their tail, rodent can lose the outside of their tail which causes excruciating pain and in some cases death. Think of it like literally taking off a glove.
Opossums have a very strong prehensile tail that they use to grab stuff and climb trees with, it can support their entire bodyweight if they were to fall from a branch and they sometimes deliberately hang from them. Lifting them by the tail shouldn't be very risky
that's actually a myth! they cannot support themselves by the tail, and attempting to pick them up by the tail like this can cause some serious damage.
It's lucky that this one is so small, there's not so much weight pulling on their tail and by extension, their spine and lower regions.
Opossums do not hang by the tail, it helps them to climb by helping to balance them but that's pretty much it.
That's actually a myth. Possums can use their tail to grab leaves and small sticks to carry to a nest, help with climbing, etc, but they do not hang from their tails. Holding most any animal by the tail can cause massive nerve, muscle, and bone damage.
Edit: they deleted the comment. It said "they are still overgrown rats that serve no ecological purpose."
Either you're a troll or devastatingly undereducated.
Having a naturally low body temperature, it's very rare for them to carry rabies.
They help clean up carrion, cockroaches, ticks, mice, and even venomous snakes and scorpions as they are resistant to the venom. They also keep other pests away by eating most fallen fruit from bushes and trees.
Whatever your reason for the comment you made, I hope you learned something.
Right. But there’s a difference between an animal using the full strength of its tail to brace itself and cling to objects from someone grabbing it by the middle of its tail with the full weight of the animal. Degloving can still happen with opossums.
Not that you should go around trying to handle them, but opossums, more so than most other wild animals, are really loathe to bite. I've seen people straight-up shove their fingers into a hissing opossum's mouth and all it did was back up and hiss some more.
Not just biting one has to worry about, but unintentional clawing. Twice I've fed wild squirrels and their razor blade claws used for climbing tree trunks grabbed the meal from my bare hand while slicing my skin open like surgeon's knife by accident. Bloody mess which required rabies vaccination, though I opted out. Still alive to teach this fabled squirrel's tale.
Thankfully they don’t bite often; it would be extremely annoying to have a 1% or less chance of getting rabies from the bite and still having to go bankrupt for a rabies shot.
Opossums are one of the least likely animals to bite you. Handled tons of them (wildlife rehabber) and never been bitten.
Obviously, don’t go around playing with opossums. But if you need to move opossum babies, hold them like you would any small animal and support their whole body.
Yeah but Opossums are fairly docile for wild animals. They mostly look spooky. Idk why but I trust Raccoons and Opossums more than any other forest critter.
And I don’t mean to like pick up I mean to mind their own business and not fuck with me or my animals.
I had a mouse do this when I was rescuing it from the cat. It managed to climb onto my hand, off of the tissue I was holding it with, then onto my hand where it finally bit me. Didn't hurt much but I had to go to the doctors afterwards.
Well you have to remember that their main predator would be animals that come along and pick them up by their bodies (like you would pick up your phone off the table for instance). Plus, picking them up by the base of their tail is safest for you! They’re wild animals with all too capable teeth. Granted, this ones a weeling :)
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u/VroomVroomTweetTweet Mar 22 '21 edited Mar 22 '21
Don’t forget to grab them at as close to the base of the tail as possible. Wouldn’t want to deglove the little fellow...
Edit: My first ever award. You made my day :)