On this Mother’s Day, would you like to learn about a super mom from nature? She’s an animal who likes to hang upside down and play dead when she’s afraid. Can you guess what animal she is? She is an opossum!
The opossum mom gives birth to many babies at a time. When they are born, they very tiny, no bigger than a peanut! So mom must protect them inside a pouch on her belly, called a marsupium, just like the kangaroo’s.
This pouch has room for 9 or 13 baby opossums, depending on the species. The babies live there for two months, nursing and getting strong, then can you guess what they do? When they are big enough to get out of the pouch, they climb all the way to mom’s back and ride there for several weeks, all the 13 of them!
And during all this time, mother opossum continues working to find water, food and shelter, with all these babies on her back! She is indeed a great mom, isn’t she?
And what about you, have you ever seen an opossum? If not, that’s because they sleep during the day and only go out at night, while we are sleeping. But you can rest assured that there are many opossums living near you, they live throughout the country and some even nest inside cities!
There are many opossum species in Brazil: the white eared opossum, the black eared opossum, the common opossum… Scroll down to see their photos and a coloring page!
Photos: Instituto Últimos Refúgios, Raúl Álvarez Mora, Diego Carau, Paulo Marcos Mattes, SpecialJake.