The Virginia opossum, the only marsupial in North America north of Mexico, appears in 694 Indiana records from the Wabash River corridor to Indiana Dunes National Park, with Marion County leading the county totals. It is a southern animal at heart that has made itself thoroughly at home across the state.
A pouch, a tail, and a grip
Opossum young are born barely formed and finish their development in the mother’s pouch, then ride on her back once they outgrow it. Adults climb with a grasping hind foot and a prehensile tail, eat nearly anything from insects, fruit, and carrion to snails and ticks, and answer mortal danger by going limp in the famous death-feint that gives us the phrase playing possum.
Winter is the hard season
Opossums do not hibernate and carry little body fat, so they must keep foraging through Indiana’s cold months, and the cost shows in the frostbitten ears and tail tips many animals wear by spring. Reports hold fairly steady through the year and crest in May, when mild nights and females traveling with pouch young put more opossums on the move.
Status in Indiana
NatureServe ranks the Virginia opossum S5, Secure, in Indiana, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
