Should I use 'opossum' or 'possum'?
In the United States and Canada, you will usually use ‘opossum’, while in Australia, you will usually use ‘possum’. Why the difference? Because you will be referring to two completely different animals (two distinct marsupials to be more precise)! The marsupial you will see in North America has the scientific name of ‘Didelphidae’, while the marsupial you will see in Australia has the scientific name of ‘Phalangeridae’.
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Example sentences using ‘opossum’
- Examples of carrion-eaters (or scavengers) include vultures, hawks, eagles, hyenas, Virginia Opossum, Tasmanian Devils, coyotes, Komodo dragons, and burying beetles.
- A few of the many examples of southern species found here include the hooded warbler, king rail, prothonotary warbler, blue-gray gnatcatcher, American badger, opossum, and eastern spiny softshell turtle.
- The Narrow-headed Slender Opossum (Marmosops cracens) is a species of opossum in the Didelphidae family.
- Robinson's mouse opossum (Marmosa robinsoni) is a species of opossum in the family Didelphidae.
- These nest sites are unlikely to be permanent; rather, the opossum will use whatever site is available as the sun begins to rise.
- American Alligators, white-tailed deer, wild boar, and numerous small animals, including squirrels, bats, Coyote, Gray Fox, Red Fox, Virginia Opossum, Raccoon, North American River Otter, Bobcat, Striped Skunk, Southeastern Pocket Gopher, and Nine-banded Armadillo can be found as well.
- Their principal food item is the opossum shrimp, "Neomysis mercedis", and species of "Acanthomysis", but they will also eat copepods and other small crustaceans.
- Gracilinanus is a genus of opossum in the family Didelphidae.
- Another general characteristic that mouse opossum have are mammary glands.
- The heavy-browed mouse opossum ("Marmosa andersoni"), or Anderson's mouse opossum, is a species of opossum in the family Didelphidae.
- This opossum inhabits forests; it is nocturnal and probably arboreal. Description.
- Anderson's mouse opossum has large thin ears, providing acute hearing.
- Anderson's mouse opossum is known from only three localities, within a narrow strip along the base of the Andes, in Cusco, and southern Peru.
- Anderson's mouse opossum is known only from one individual collected in 1954, and several more specimens caught in the late 1990s, and thus very little is known about the biology of this incredibly rare animal. However, much can be deduced from studies of closely related species.
- Like "M. robinsoni", it is likely that Anderson's mouse opossum is insectivorous, with fruit also playing an important role in the diet.
- Wildlife in Poricy park include rabbit, skunk, snake, bat, opossum, groundhog, white-tailed deer,
- American eel, multiple species of bird including owls,hawks, and Turkey Vultures as well as red fox (one seen 5/9/10 with pups).
- He was originally posted as a junior officer on board the old and obsolete destroyer HMS "Opossum" in Plymouth.
- The Guajira mouse opossum (Marmosa xerophila) is a species of opossum in the family Didelphidae.
Example sentences using ‘possum’
It is important to note that the word ‘possum’ is frequently used incorrectly to refer to the ‘opossum’ in North America. In many of the sentences below, the term which should have been used is ‘opossum’.- As evidence of his success Cuming sought an esteemed symbolic headdress known as the Crown of Tanasi— described as a wig made of dyed possum hair.
- She first met husband Ted while working as a possum trapper on his family's farm on the East Cape of New Zealand.
- The Tasmanian pygmy possum ("Cercartetus lepidus"), also known as the little pygmy possum, is the world's smallest possum.
- It was first described by Oldfield Thomas in 1888, after he identified that a museum specimen labelled as an eastern pygmy possum in fact represented a species then unknown to science.
- Although it is a marsupial, the Tasmanian pygmy possum superficially resembles a dormouse, and it is the smallest of all the known species of possum.
- The Tasmanian pygmy possum is found throughout Tasmania, but was at one time thought to be extinct elsewhere.
- The Tasmanian pygmy possum is nocturnal and arboreal. It lives primarily in shrubland or forest undergrowth, and, although a good climber, rarely ventures into the higher branches of trees, presumably because this would make it more vulnerable to avian predators.
- Most nectarivores are insects or birds, but there are also nectarivorous mammals, notably several species of bats in the Southwestern United States and Mexico, as well as the Australian Honey Possum ("Tarsipes rostratus"), and Geckos (genus "Phesulma") in Mauritius.
- Band of Horses third album, "Infinite Arms", was released on Bridwell's previously defunct Brown Records label (along with Columbia and Fat Possum).
- Mammals on Erith are the Southern Brown Bandicoot, Long-nosed Potoroo and Common Brushtail Possum.
- Park Road 33 (PR 33) is a park road in north central Texas that runs from Caddo to Possum Kingdom State Park.
- The highway turns to the northeast before entering Palo Pinto County and Possum Kingdom State Park.
- She also taught in an abandoned Possum Trot Church, which still stands on the Berry College campus.
- Martha Berry is the subject of several biographies: "Martha Berry the Sunday Lady of Possum Trot" by Tracy Byers, and "Miracle in the Mountains" by Harnett Thomas Kane and Inez Henry.
- Sticky TV is a New Zealand children's programme created by Pickled Possum Productions that has been on New Zealand screens since 2002.
- Perennial favourites of Australian children's literature include Dorothy Wall's "Blinky Bill", Ethel Pedley's "Dot and the Kangaroo", May Gibbs' "Snugglepot and Cuddlepie", Norman Lindsay's "The Magic Pudding", Ruth Park's "The Muddleheaded Wombat" and Mem Fox's "Possum Magic" and Ethel Turner's Seven Little Australians.
- The name has been described as a "fun-loving insult" referring to a French creole "so poor that he lived on pawpaw in the summer and possum in the winter."