[travel.au, weather, pics]

[wispfox]

Thunderstorm glee!

Real thunderstorm, even, not the almost-but-not-quite-right things that New Hampshire and Boston area have... (downpour, lots of lightning and thunder). Yay!


Flat possum, trying to decide if it wants to run back up the tree.


Evil possum, eating bread it took from my hand. (I stopped using the flash at this point, so the rest are a bit fuzzy, being as it was dark)


Mmm. Bread. Doesn't it look like a really big squirrel? (ok, except for the tail and claws)


What? What's that over there? I hope it's not a dog! (they _really_ didn't approve of dogs, as dogs would try to catch them)


OK, _fine_, not only will I sit next to you while I eat the bread you gave me, I'll actually face you and let you get a decent picture.



Possums. Sorta managed to pet one while feeding it, even! (a fair number would eat from your hand, if you didn't move suddenly)

Comments

Re: Wow

[opalmirror.livejournal.com]

Those are seriously *cute* possums, not the rat tailed North American road pizza from back home. Are these possums also marsupials? Suzanne, what's their genus and species?

Re: Wow

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

Yes, Australian possums are also marsupials. In fact there are very few native Australian mammals that aren't marsupials (dingoes, fruit bats, and marine mammals). So the marsupials have to try to fill every available ecological niche.

NorAm possums are _Didelphidae_, whereas we have a bunch of different possums, I think mostly in _Phalangeridae_. I'm guessing this is a brush-tail possum, _Trichosurus vulpecula_.

Re: Wow

[opalmirror.livejournal.com]

Cool. So I did a little browsing around on Wikipedia and realize now that the common taxonomic root is the Mammal Subclass Marsupiala, so they are perhaps not closely related. They sure are cute though. The whole thing makes me even more eager to visit Australia.

Re: Wow

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

makes me even more eager to visit Australia

Mwa-ha-ha-ha!