#virginia opossum (didelphis virginiana)

[fyanimaldiversity]

Melanistic Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) [x]

(Photo altered as original was of poor quality, might not be 100% accurate but did my best)

#melanism #melanistic #virginia opossum #opossum #Didelphis virginiana #marsupial #mammal

[lazer-t]

Virginia Opossum for a $5 Ko-fi supporter

Requested by @heartstringquartet

#art #my art #digital #digital art #clip studio #clip studio paint #csp #kofi #ko-fi #kofi commissions #request #commissioned work #doodle #sketch #coloured #opossum #possum #virginia opossum #Didelphis virginiana #heartstringquartet #lazert #lazer-t

[queerfemboybf]

opossum appreciation post

i love them so much 🥺

#opossum #opossums #opossum appreciation #didelphimorphia #marsupial #virginia opossum #didelphis #didelphis virginiana

[thatnostalgiccarp]

Critter fact #112:

Opossums are the only marsupials in the United States

#critter facts #Mammals #Mammal facts #american opossum #didelphis virginiana #virginia opossum #opossum

[gfdelmar]

Brb crying

#opossum #virginia opossum #didelphis virginiana #didelphidae #sweet angel baby #wildlife

[mammalianmammals]

 Virginia Opossums (Didelphis virginiana), mother with babies, family Didelphidae, northern United States

The only marsupial found in the United States or Canada.

photograph by Kathleen Reeder Kathleen Reeder (@kathleenreeder)

#didelphis #opossum #didelphidae #marsupial #mammal #animals #nature #north america

[uncharismatic-fauna]

Uncharismatic Fact of the Day

Virginia opossums have a great smile, thanks to their teeth! Adults have 50 teeth in total, the most of any North American mammal.

(Image: A virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) by Sergei Drovetski

If you like what I do, consider buying me a ko-fi!

#virginia opossum #Didelphimorphia #Didelphidae #large american opossums #new world opossums #opossums #marsupials #mammals #uncharismatic facts

[cypherdecypher]

Animal of the Day!

Virginia Opossum (Didelphis virginiana)

(Photo by Stan Tekiela)

Conservation Status- Least Concern

Habitat- United States; Central America

Size (Weight/Length)- 6 kg; 95 cm

Diet- Insects; Worms; Fruits; Seeds; Small mammals; Small birds

Cool Facts- Being one of the few animals to survive in a human world, the Virginia opossum is the ultimate opportunist. Eating anything from cat food to road kill to riffling through garbage cans, these opossums can survive in almost any forested environment. The Virginia opossum has a unique talent of playing dead when encountering a threat. Being the only marsupial in North America, these opossums are single moms and have up to three litters of eight joeys per year. Once old enough to leave the pouch at 3 months, they cling to their mother’s back until they leave at around 5 months of age. 

Rating- 14/10 (They scream for they must.)

Animtober- Forest (An iconic woodland critter.)

#Animal of the day #Animals #Mammals #Marsupial #Wednesday #October 12 #Virginia opossum #biology #science #conservation #the more you know #Animtober #Inktober #Forest

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Umwelt: What Matters Most in the World

(Originally posted at my blog at https://rebeccalexa.com/umwelt-what-matters-most-in-the-world/)

I will be the first to admit that a lot of philosophy tends to bend my brain in ways that I’m really not prepared for. I’m a very earthy creature, and I am more comfortable in physical, solid spaces than in abstract conceptualizations. Even the modalities of psychology I gravitated toward in grad school tended to be based in our interactions with physical nature, and measurable effects thereof. But it was a casual discussion on philosophy with regards to the awareness of animals that introduced me to the concept of umwelt.

Originally coined by biologist Jakob Johann Freiherr von Uexküll, umwelt describes the unique way in which a given animal experiences the world around it. Uexküll looked at how various beings take in information through their senses; the way that a blind, deaf worm engages with their environment through taste and touch is very different from how we with our hearing and color vision connect with our world. Even when I am walking with my dog out in the woods, her interpretation of what’s going on around us is going to be much more heavily influenced by hearing, and especially smell, than my sight-heavy approach. (And when we engage with each other, our respective umwelten create a semiosphere!)

So umwelt is essentially the sum total of all the ways in which an animal takes in that sensory information and attaches meaning to each fragment thereof. It’s how they tell the story of the world around them, and understand their place in it. And they rank the signs according to importance; umwelt is more strongly formed by things that are of particular interest to the animal.

That means that umwelt, rather than being constant throughout life, is always shifting according to new sensory input, or changes in how the senses work; as my dog gets older, her hearing and vision may not be as good as they were, but if her nose stays sharp then smells may become an even more important part of how she navigates her world.

Or look at a Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana), which is born as a blind, deaf little hairless being with two front legs that they use to crawl to the mother’s abdominal pouch. At that time their umwelt centers on seeking and retaining the warmth of their mother’s pouch, and the sensation of the constant flow of warm, nourishing milk. After about ten weeks they leave the pouch as a miniature furry little possum and travel on their mother’s back while learning to walk; their umwelt has expanded quite a bit to include the sight and smell of their mother, the visual and scent cues that tell them how close they are to known food sources, and visual, sound, and audio information warning of various dangers. At around five months, the opossum becomes independent, and their mother fades from their umwelt while being replaced by an even larger network of food, danger, and perhaps even potential mates. Over a lifetime, as the opossum’s senses develop (and, with age, decline) and their priorities shift, so does their umwelt evolve with them.

This then led me into a bit of a rabbit hole with biosemiotics. Semiotics is the study of symbols and the communication of meaning, to include communication with the self. Biosemiotics, then, is how non-human beings assign meaning to various things in their lives, and interpret the world they live in. Zoosemiotics specifically refers to the semiotics of animals, like the examples I’ve given so far, while endosemiotics (aka phytosemiotics or vegetative semiotics) is semiotics at a cellular or even molecular level.

One example of endosemiotics can be found in our immune systems. A B lymphocyte can recognize an invader such as a virus or bacteria, and it sends out a signal (an antigen) to T lymphocytes that then attack the invader. The B lymphocyte’s umwelt consists of information received through surface receptors that can detect certain proteins and other molecules, and the response it’s programmed to have as a result of detecting an invader. The T lymphocyte’s umwelt, on the other hand, centers on the B lymphocyte’s antigen signal, as well as the invader itself.

Biosemiotics is important because it moves meaning-making beyond humans, demonstrating that we are not the only beings who assign more importance to one part of our world than another. It promotes the idea that human language is not necessary for an organism to be able to find meaning in their environment. I’m cautious about anthropomorphization–assigning human traits to non-human beings–but biosemiotics allows each being to be its own unique self, rather than being gauged by human standards.

It’s all too easy for me to get overwhelmed by just how technical some of the discussion over biosemiotics can get (especially when delving into the “semotics” part of it!) But my takeaway is that it’s nice to have a term–umwelt–that encapsulates the unique experience that every animal, plant, fungus, slime mold, and other being has, no matter how large or small its world may be.

I can envision millions upon millions of overlapping umwelten in every ecosystem, becoming semiospheres whenever two or more of those umwelten nudge, slide, or crash into each other. I’m already delighted by knowing that I myself contain several ecosystems, with microbiomes in my organs and on my skin and more. But I can now also consider the umwelten and semiospheres of the lymphocytes in my immune system, along with all the other cells that are carrying on their existences within my various tissues, fluids, and so forth.

Of course, this gets into discussions of whether umwelt requires some level of consciousness, the nature of consciousness, sentience vs. sapience, etc., etc., all of which are the sort of headache-inducing philosophical discussions that I try to avoid at this stage of my life. So I can understand that this whole umwelt-biosemiotics thing is still being hammered out and explored and critiqued, but also use it to augment my own personal model of my world, internal and external (my innenwelt!) And for now, umwelt is a perfectly good shorthand for “the unique way in which an organism experiences its environment.”

Did you enjoy this post? Consider taking one of my online foraging and natural history classes, checking out my other articles, or picking up a paperback or ebook I’ve written! You can even buy me a coffee here!

#umwelt #nature #vocabulary #vocab #natural history #natural philosophy #philosophy #psychology #ecopsychology #consciousness #semiotics #biosemiotics #symbols #wildlife #ecology #biology #science #scicomm #science communication #long post

[papasbaseball]

Didelphis virginiana

Virginia Opossum

Wesleyan College (2009)

#skeletons #bones #opossum #articulation #animal anatomy

[fyanimaldiversity]

Leucistic opossum (Didelphis virginiana) [x]

#leucistic #leucism #opossum #virginia opossum #Didelphis virginiana #marsupial #mammal #color mutation

[0ll0ll00]

#possum #opossums #marsupials #nature #animal facts #spirit animal

[alcnfr]

A Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) only showed up in the stills not in any videos and the trail cam's worn lens is at it's worst in stills...

#nature #my photography #feedlot #backyard nature #wildlife photography #possum #opossum #nature photography

[thatnostalgiccarp]

Critter fact #110:

American opossums (Didelphis virginiana) don't carry more disease than other mammals, this is especially notable in that they have a low susceptibility to rabies. They also have some immunity to snake venom.

#critter facts #opossum #virginia opossum #American opossum #Mammals #Mammal facts #Didelphis virginiana

[thegreenwolf]

Today was busy and overheated so I had to wait til evening to get to drawing, but here's my Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) for this particular Zooly prompt. I love that they're one of the few lasting gifts we have from South America from the Great American Interchange 2.7 million years ago. (Probably a safer bet than the terror birds!) Also, opossums used to not be found west of the Rockies. Folks brought them over during the Depression for food; I always heard it that some CCC boys brought them so they could hunt them with their hounds. While they aren't native here in the PNW, they're relatively innocuous, so I'll give them a pass 😃 Ink pen and Copic markers

#opossum #Virginia opossum #possum #passum #marsupials #Great American Interchange #mammals #Zooly #Zooly Art Challenge #Copics #illustration #traditional art

[woozymitts]

Virginia Opossum (Didelphis virginiana)

SNOOTLING OBTAINED

I put the trap out last night baited with a piece of bread and canned tuna and look who came to have a snack! They're so cute I feel like I'm going to cry just looking at them.

They're like the size of a kitten. Maybe around 4-6 months old? I haven't seen any other opossums in the area but maybe the mom is around here somewhere and the babies recently left her. I'm glad I caught this one before it could get hit by a car.

Also forever mad that opossums don't live long in captivity and their diets are a pain in the ass to get right cause I want 5000 of them.

We're gonna see if my moms friend will let us release it on her property

#Not Pets #Wildlife Photography #Virginia Opossum