kangaroo opossum

Kangaroo opossum (Neodelphis aquapodae)

Family: opossums (Didelphidae)

Habitat: North America

The history of North American marsupials like the other descendants from the South America in the time period of the Pliocene is sufficiently simple: they reached a certain success, but with the offense of the Ice Age… they survived, in contrast to such placental beasts as the glyptodont and the jaguar. This success was based on the fact that the American marsupial animals (the opossums) are the ecological analogs of the placental rats and are also just as unpretentious in regards to their environment. Therefore, the main (and only) representative of the North American marsupials, the Virginian opossum (Didelphis virginiana), had wonderfully survived the epoch of man, and the beginning of the Neocene, and even occupied several new ecological niches, after evolving into several new species.

However, the kangaroo opossum is one of the most unusual descendants of the Virginian opossum, and one of the most different from it. Reaching the size of the extinct American beaver, it has the built of a kangaroo, with webbed rear paws and claws forelimbs; it has a tail like that of a muskrat and a short, beak-like snout. In addition, this animal hunts in the water - in an element, which is not very hospitable to the marsupials.

The main concentration of the population of the kangaroo opossums is on the coasts of the lake Mishe-Nami and similarly large bodies of water. There, these uncommon marsupials dig their burrows, and hunt their prey - fishes, amphibians, and so forth. They look for their prey from the shore, after which they rush into the water by a massive leap, and after quickly reaching it, they kill their prey with their powerful jaws. The kangaroo opossums swim quite quickly, they also get tired very quickly, and they prefer to spend a large part of their time on dry land, caring after each other, eating and watching for their prey, rearing their kits and so forth.

In winter the kangaroo opossums hibernate in their burrows, and most of the individuals of this species perishes at that time, some from the frost, and some from the predators, especially if their burrow is shallow; but in the most best case, the lifetime of kangaroo opossum is 6-8 years; it is another matter that little mammals are ready to breed at 9 months of age, each rearing 8-12 young in its pouch.