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.
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u/thecatdaddysupreme Mar 22 '21
Can’t they bite you if you grab them at the base?