small furry Australian arboreal marsupials having long usually prehensile tails
a furry, nocturnal marsupial, and in this case, a native of Australia
an arboreal marsupials native to Australia
a small nocturnal Australian marsupial
paihamu ( Trichosurus vulpecula) Possums were introduced into New Zealand from Australia. They have become a very common pest in New Zealand and a huge problem for our native species. They munch on many native plants and they also eat bird eggs and even chicks. Possums sleep in their dens during the day and then go looking for food at night. If you travel into the bush at night with a torch, you may see a possum's yellow eyes glowing in the light.
A possum is any of about 63 small to medium-sized arboreal marsupial species native to Australia, New Guinea and Sulawesi. The name derives from their resemblance to the opossums of the Americas and, unlike most names applied to Australian fauna in the early years of European colonisation, happens to be accurate: the opossums of America are distant relatives. (The name is from Algonquian wapathemwa, not Greek or Latin, so the plural is possums, not possa.)
