Opossum tracks

June 17, 2012 by retrieverman

I got a nice photo of some opossum tracks this afternoon.

The front foot track is the one that looks like a large asterisk. It’s on top.

The hind foot track is the one that looks like an open hand. The hind feet have opposable thumbs that are used to grip branches. They can also grip with their front feet, but their opposable thumbs on their hind feet are unique among animals in this part of North America. No other native species has this feature.

Posted in wildlife | Tagged opossum, opossum thumbs, Virginia opossum | 3 Comments

3 Responses

on June 17, 2012 at 4:30 pm massugu

I can’t help but remark how much those tracks resemble fossilized dinosaur tracks.
- on June 17, 2012 at 4:32 pm retrieverman
  
  I haven’t posted the turkey tracks yet.
  
  Those are very much like dinosaurs.
  
  Opossums are considered the most primitive marsupials, and are among the most primitive mammals. Our ancestral mammal “template” isn’t very different from an opossum.
on June 18, 2012 at 1:57 pm kittenz

I often see large flocks of wild turkeys foraging in meadows alongside the highway during my morning commute. It doesn’t take a very big leap of imagination to envision them as flocks of small dinosaurs; actually I believe that many dinosaurs probably resembled large cursorial birds in appearance and behavior. I wonder if we’ll ever know, with reasonable certainty, what dinosaurs looked like? I think that turkeys, bustards, rheas, osrtiches, cassowaries, emus, etc., give us a pretty good idea.