What type of possum

All rights reserved. Common Name: Possums. Scientific Name: Phalangeriformes. Type: Mammals. Weight: From less than an ounce to over 20 pounds.

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The body of a possum is made for life in the trees. They have strong, sharp claws, and hand-like back feet. The Ringtail Possum has a prehensile tail which acts like another hand to help it grip tree branches with ease. They can also use it to carry nesting material. Brushtails get their name from their dark, thick, bushy tail. They have pointed ears like a cat and are about the size of a big cat. Brushtails eat leaves, flowers, fruits and occasionally meat and small invertebrates.

Brushtails vary in colour throughout their range, from a copper colour in northern Queensland to a grey or even blackish colouration in the southern states. The Ringtail has smaller ears than the Brushtail. It is usually grey-brown in colour with red flanks, white underparts and white spots behind its ears.

Common Ringtail Possums get their name from their long, tapering tail. This possum can grip branches with its tail and even carry nesting material with it. Common Ringtail Possums live along the east coast of Australia and in the south-west corner of Western Australia.

In southern Australia, Ringtails build nests called dreys out of sticks, bark and grass. Common Brushtail Possums do not build dreys. They live in tree hollows, nest boxes or roofs. Brushtails get their name from their thick, bushy tail. As well as in the areas the Ringtail is found, the Brushtail also lives in the centre of Australia and a greater area of south-east South Australia. Many of our possums are dependent on tree hollows. They need them to sleep in during the daylight hours. Competition from other possums, birds, bats and gliders along with the clearing of many old trees has reduced suitable hollows and possums often move in to the roof or walls of your home.

They are not quiet — if you have a possum in your roof, you will soon know about it! By providing a nest box outside about 4m up in a tree, your backyard can become a better home for possums.

Backyard buddies are the native animals that share our built-up areas, our beaches and waterways, our backyards and our parks. Where two possums are seen together it is usually a mother and joey. Ringtail possums often have twins. In urban areas, natural predation has largely been replaced by vehicle mortality and attacks by dogs and cats. In spite of this and the natural habitat destruction that takes place as part of urban development, possums are still found in inner city areas and are common in many suburbs.

Of course eating human food was what made Hush visible again and in nature when possums start entering our roofs or stealing fruit from our trees they also draw attention to themselves! A female brustail possum emerging from a small gap between the roof and guttering of a surburban home and a half grown joey followed her out!

In some cases possums are wrongly blamed for stealing fruit or inhabiting your ceiling, with introduced rats likely to be the real culprits.

How you answer the following questions can help you to work out whether you are being visited by rats or possums. Rats weighing no more than a few hundred grams tend to scurry when they move while brushtail possums weighing in at up to five kilograms will thump about in the roof even when they are walking slowly.

Rats also need to keep their continually growing front teeth chisel-sharp and will gnaw loudly on anything they find even carrying old bones into roof and wall cavities to maintain their teeth. If you hear noises in the wall cavity of your home, it is most likely that it will be a rat. In either case the noise made will help you to guess the size of the animal. A resident male brushtail possum will also make a loud throaty call to warn other males that are found within its home range listen to the recording available on the species profile on this website.

Brushtail possums may have a nest of leaves in your ceiling but will just as happily do without, or bed down on ceiling insulation. Rats usually build small nests in sheltered locations, often on the ground, and line them with shredded paper, rags or dry plant material.

Ringtail possums create a ball of woven twigs within the canopy of a tree sometimes only a few metres above the ground. In the wild, brushtail possums simply curl up in a sheltered cavity like a tree hollow, sometimes lining it with leaves. Rats and possums typically have black pellet shaped droppings ranging in size from about seven millimetres in length for rats to more than 15 mm for brushtail possums with ringtail possums somewhere in the middle.

Where you find them will also be a clue as to who left them with rats droppings often being found scattered around a sheltered feeding or nest site. Possums droppings are more likely to be found under a tree where the animal has been feeding. If a brushtail possum can get its head into a space then it can probably squeeze the rest of its body in too.

Older homes often have openings into roof cavities that are big enough to let possums in. Possum-proofing the roof of a house should be part of a home maintenance program but is often overlooked until the dull tread of possum feet overhead wakes you up in the middle of the night or a brown stain suddenly appears on the ceiling where a brushtail possum is using your roof space as a toilet. A simple way to find out whether an opening into the roof cavity of your home is being used by a possum is to loosely scrunch up a few sheets of newspaper and push them into any holes you find.

If a possum is using it as an entry point into your roof it will push them out when it emerges at dusk. This process may have to be repeated after a possum has been removed and an entrance is sealed off as a possum may be using a number of entry points. Any vegetation overhanging the roof should also be trimmed back at the same time to remove access to other possible entry points.

To avoid having to do the repair work at night it is possible to cover the entrance with a one-way exit that will allow the possum to leave but stop it from getting back in this should be done in conjunction with erecting a nest box nearby to give the possum a chance to find alternative shelter.