The Fur Animals of Louisiana 79 



The five toes of the two front legs are provided with 

 long, sharp claws and the first toe, or thumb, is not at all 

 opposable and, as far as its anterior pair of legs go, the 

 opossum is very much like many other mammals. 



The opossum has a mouthful of teeth all crowned with 

 minute and sharply-pointed cusps, with which to crush the 

 insects on which these animals delight to feed, although it 

 has many other articles of diet on its nightly menu for it is 

 almost wholly a nocturnal prowler. 



But it is the pouch that the female possesses that has 

 given this animal a popular place in natural history. Be- 

 longing to the Order Marsupialia, a natural history division 

 which includes all of the pouched mammals, or as they are 

 more commonly termed, Marsupials, the opossum is related 

 to some other remarkable and destructive animals mostly 

 confined to the Australian region, the kangaroo being a 

 noteworthy example. 



This order takes its name from an external abdominal 

 pouch found only on the female, in which the young, after 

 birth, are carried and nursed until the progeny attain some 

 size. 



As has been pointed out by Stone and Cram, 16 mar- 

 supials, are in fact, the survivors of an ancient population 

 of animals which was spread over the earth before the su- 

 perior beasts of the present era made their appearance. 

 Today marsupials are restricted to the United States 

 (with one example, the opossum), South and Middle 

 America, and Australia. The variety of pouched mammals 

 found in Australia is quite large, the largest and best known 

 being the kangaroo, but this fauna also contains the thyla- 

 cine or Tasmanian wolf, the dasyure or Tasmanian devil, 

 the small bandicoots, the wombats, flying phlangers, count- 

 erparts of our flying squirrels, and marsupial moles have 

 also been found. The teeth of marsupials are more primi- 

 tive than those of most of the other mammals and are 

 generally more numerous. Some marsupials are carnivo- 

 rous, others hibivorous and others are, like our opossum, 

 omnivorous. 



16 Stone and Cram, American Animals, pp. 3-4. 



