Possum babies move into baby's house!

A scream from the significant other drew my attention to the styrofoam
house that I built for the outdoor cat Baby. A few weeks ago a raccoon
moved in for a day but quickly left. Yesterday it was a mother possum
with her babies. So cute. Baby is letting them stay rent free, but as
of last evening the mother had gone and the babies were still there;
by this morning she had moved all the babies elsewhere.

I have this link to a pictu

https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx...vw SjLwbFox64

Wow, is that a link. Microsoft has to do better than that if they
expect people to use Skydrive.

dgk wrote:
A scream from the significant other drew my attention to the styrofoam
house that I built for the outdoor cat Baby. A few weeks ago a raccoon
moved in for a day but quickly left. Yesterday it was a mother possum
with her babies. So cute. Baby is letting them stay rent free, but as
of last evening the mother had gone and the babies were still there;
by this morning she had moved all the babies elsewhere.

I have this link to a pictu

https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx...vw SjLwbFox64

Wow, is that a link. Microsoft has to do better than that if they
expect people to use Skydrive.

Very cute.
--
Adrian

Christina Websell wrote:

"MaryL" wrote in message

Possums (opossums) can get rabies, but it is extremely rare. Possums are
marsupials, not mammals, and rabies is usually associated with mammals.

If they produce milk for their babies - which they do - in what way are they
not mammals?
I'm not a possum expert, but AFAIK they are mammals.
It's possible to be a marsupial and a mammal at the same time.


Exactly. A marsupial is a type of mammal. Most mammals are "placental",
but marsupials are not.

--
Joyce

"The most terrible things can enter one's life. Hopefully they're only
mundane." -- The Midwest Book Review

Joy wrote:

It is also a monotreme.

Yes - the living members of the class Mammalia are divided into three
sub-classes: Monotremata (egg-laying mammals such as echidnas,
platypuses etc); Marsupalia (marsupials such as kangaroos, wombats,
koalas, opossums etc that give birth to poorly developed young into a
pouch) and Placentalia (mammals that have a placenta and give birth to
well-formed offspring - all the rest, including us).

Another interesting misconception is that 'animals' and 'mammals' are
the same thing. The kingdom Animalia actually includes anything that is
not a plant, bacteria, virus, fungus or protistan. Therefore fish,
birds, reptiles, amphibians, molluscs, arthropods, worms etc are all
animals. Two nice images illustrating this can be seen he
http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb...4-88186EA7.jpg
http://gryphonschoollrc.files.wordpr...sification.jpg

Here endeth the lesson :-)

Deb.
--
http://www.scientific-art.com

"He looked a fierce and quarrelsome cat, but claw he never would;
He only bit the ones he loved, because they tasted good." S. Greenfield

"Debbie Wilson" wrote in message
...
Joy wrote:

It is also a monotreme.

Yes - the living members of the class Mammalia are divided into three
sub-classes: Monotremata (egg-laying mammals such as echidnas,
platypuses etc); Marsupalia (marsupials such as kangaroos, wombats,
koalas, opossums etc that give birth to poorly developed young into a
pouch) and Placentalia (mammals that have a placenta and give birth to
well-formed offspring - all the rest, including us).

Another interesting misconception is that 'animals' and 'mammals' are
the same thing. The kingdom Animalia actually includes anything that is
not a plant, bacteria, virus, fungus or protistan. Therefore fish,
birds, reptiles, amphibians, molluscs, arthropods, worms etc are all
animals. Two nice images illustrating this can be seen he
http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb...4-88186EA7.jpg
http://gryphonschoollrc.files.wordpr...sification.jpg

Here endeth the lesson :-)

Deb.
--
http://www.scientific-art.com

"He looked a fierce and quarrelsome cat, but claw he never would;
He only bit the ones he loved, because they tasted good." S. Greenfield

Fungus? I thought fungus was a plant. Also, I don't think there is an
'etc.' where monotremes are concerned. I'm pretty sure the platypus and the
echidna are the only monotremes in existence.

Joy

Joy wrote:

Fungus? I thought fungus was a plant. Also, I don't think there is an
'etc.' where monotremes are concerned. I'm pretty sure the platypus and the
echidna are the only monotremes in existence.

Hi Joy,

Fungi are definitely not plants - they have a kingdom of their own. One
major difference is that fungi do not posses the ability to make their
own food, unlike most plants which use photosynthesis to create food
using sunlight. You are right about the monotremes - one platypus and
two echidna species are all that exist in the present day.

Deb. (with her biologist hat on)
--
http://www.scientific-art.com

"He looked a fierce and quarrelsome cat, but claw he never would;
He only bit the ones he loved, because they tasted good." S. Greenfield

On Apr 19, 1:37*pm, "Joy" wrote:
"Debbie Wilson" wrote in message

...



Joy wrote:

It is also a monotreme.

Yes - the living members of the class Mammalia are divided into three
sub-classes: Monotremata (egg-laying mammals such as echidnas,
platypuses etc); Marsupalia (marsupials such as kangaroos, wombats,
koalas, opossums etc that give birth to poorly developed young into a
pouch) and Placentalia (mammals that have a placenta and give birth to
well-formed offspring - all the rest, including us).

Another interesting misconception is that 'animals' and 'mammals' are
the same thing. The kingdom Animalia actually includes anything that is
not a plant, bacteria, virus, fungus or protistan. Therefore fish,
birds, reptiles, amphibians, molluscs, arthropods, worms etc are all
animals. Two nice images illustrating this can be seen he
http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb...4-88186EA7.jpg
http://gryphonschoollrc.files.wordpr...sification.jpg

Here endeth the lesson :-)

Deb.
--
http://www.scientific-art.com

"He looked a fierce and quarrelsome cat, but claw he never would;
He only bit the ones he loved, because they tasted good." S. Greenfield

Fungus? *I thought fungus was a plant.

Everyone thought so until the genomic evidence showed that they are
far distant from plants and closer to animals. Although they aren't
really close to either.


Also, I don't think there is an
'etc.' where monotremes are concerned. *I'm pretty sure the platypus and the
echidna are the only monotremes in existence.

I can't think of another one.

--
Will in New Haven

The duck-billed platypus also feeds its young on milk, but
I don't think it's considered a "mammal" either.
A platypus is also a mammal
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_a_platypus_a_mammal

But it isn't a marsupial - it's a monotreme.

The taxonomy goes

-- monotremes (platypuses and echidnas)
|
|- other mammals - marsupials (like possums, wombats and kangaroos)
|
|- placental mammals (like us, cats and hyenas)

That is, we are more closely related to possums than either we or
possums are to platypuses.

I sometimes wonder what human society would be like of women laid eggs.
There would be educational recordings you could play through the shell
with special headphones to educate your offspring before it hatched.
Antenatal yoga classes in how to best sit on your egg while hatching
it. True crime magazines would have horror stories about mothers being
found in possession of omelette pans and deadbeat fathers left in
charge of an egg and putting it in the fridge with the beer.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
e m a i l : j a c k @ c a m p i n . m e . u k
Jack Campin, 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU, Scotland
mobile 07800 739 557 http://www.campin.me.uk Twitter: JackCampin

"Jack Campin" wrote in message
...
The duck-billed platypus also feeds its young on milk, but
I don't think it's considered a "mammal" either.
A platypus is also a mammal
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_a_platypus_a_mammal

But it isn't a marsupial - it's a monotreme.

The taxonomy goes

-- monotremes (platypuses and echidnas)
|
|- other mammals - marsupials (like possums, wombats and kangaroos)
|
|- placental mammals (like us, cats and hyenas)

That is, we are more closely related to possums than either we or
possums are to platypuses.

I sometimes wonder what human society would be like of women laid eggs.
There would be educational recordings you could play through the shell
with special headphones to educate your offspring before it hatched.
Antenatal yoga classes in how to best sit on your egg while hatching
it. True crime magazines would have horror stories about mothers being
found in possession of omelette pans and deadbeat fathers left in
charge of an egg and putting it in the fridge with the beer.

LOL!

Jack Campin wrote:

I sometimes wonder what human society would be like of women laid eggs.
There would be educational recordings you could play through the shell
with special headphones to educate your offspring before it hatched.
Antenatal yoga classes in how to best sit on your egg while hatching
it. True crime magazines would have horror stories about mothers being
found in possession of omelette pans and deadbeat fathers left in
charge of an egg and putting it in the fridge with the beer.

There was an American TV series a number of years ago that featured a
colony of humanoid aliens co-existing with normal humans. However,
after conception, it was the alien MAN who carried the fetus to term
("maternity suits" and all). I can guarantee there'd be no problem with
human overpopulation if the same arrangement were true for us!


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
e m a i l : j a c k @ c a m p i n . m e . u k
Jack Campin, 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU, Scotland
mobile 07800 739 557 http://www.campin.me.uk Twitter: JackCampin