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Did You Know Possums Eat Almost all of Your Yard Ticks?

At night, when you catch sight of an opossum in your car headlights, you are allowed to think, “That is one ugly little animal.”
But what opossums lack in looks, they make up in originality.
They’re America’s only babies-in-the pouch marsupial.
They’re a southern species — proper name Virginia opossum — that’s adapted to New England winters.
They’re one of the oldest species of mammal around, having waddled past dinosaurs.
They eat grubs and insects and even mice, working over the environment like little vacuum cleaners.


“They really eat whatever they find,” said Laura Simon, wildlife ecologist with the U.S. Humane Society.

And they’re an animal whose first line of defense includes drooling and a wicked hissing snarl — a bluff — followed by fainting dead away and “playing possum.”

“They are just interesting critters,” said Mark Clavette, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
And now ecologists have learned something else about opossums. They’re a sort of magnet when it comes to riding the world of black-legged ticks, which spread Lyme disease.
“Don’t hit opossums if they’ve playing dead in the road,” said Richard Ostfeld, of the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y.

Ostfeld is forest ecologist and an expert on the environmental elements of infectious diseases like Lyme disease.
Several years ago, scientists decided to learn about the part different mammals play in the spread of the ticks and the disease.

They tested six species — white-footed mice, chipmunks, squirrels, opossums and veerys and catbirds — by capturing and caging them, and then exposing each test subject to 100 ticks.

What they found, is that of the six, the opossums were remarkably good at getting rid of the ticks — much more so that any of the others.

“I had no suspicion they’d be such efficient tick-killing animals,” Ostfeld said.

Indeed, among other opossum traits, there is this: They groom themselves fastidiously, like cats. If they find a tick, they lick it off and swallow it. (The research team on the project went through droppings to find this out. All praise to those who study possum poop.)

Extrapolating from their findings, Ostfeld said, the team estimated that in one season, an opossum can kill about 5,000 ticks.

via:  Cary Institute

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11 Responses to "Did You Know Possums Eat Almost all of Your Yard Ticks?"

  1. Stephanie Letendre says:

    I made a wild life refuge in my yard. I just got certified yesterday. One of the things I wanted to do was attract opossums, can you tell me what I can do to my yard to make it more appealing to them. I am building a brush pile today for wildlife. Will this help attract them or should I do something else.
    Thanks for your help.

  2. Jude Gluck says:

    Love them possums! Almost died from lyme, erlichia, anaplasmosis & babesiosis!!! God bless those possums! Three of them were having relay races in my yard two nights ago! I feed them! Can’t wait til I can get them to eat out of my hand!!! THEY ARE SO UGLY THEY ARE CUTE THEY LOOK LIKE MICHAEL KEATON & JEANA WHAT’S HER NAME FROM BEETLEJUICE!

  3. Cathy Curry says:

    I would like a brochure

  4. Yooperwoman says:

    How interesting. I will pass this on to my friends, as opossum have a bad rap around here.

  5. mrsnanny624 says:

    My neighbor believes opossum’s eat chickens. is this true?

    • Frances says:

      they will kill chickens, by ripping their guts out. We shot it after it kill 3 hens, don’t know if it was going to eat them or just kill them.

  6. Dana says:

    their temps are low so they cannot carry rabies vaccine

  7. A says:

    Send these animals to India too

  8. Jennifer says:

    Possums Love cat food, especially the canned smelly stuff. Long story

  9. Gene says:

    We have feral cats at our farm and we place food out for them frequently. A local possum visits to eat and recently shared his meal with a visiting skunk. They played together on the porch before leaving for the evening.

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