The animal that carries the Commonwealth’s name appears in 1,695 Virginia records spread across 111 counties, from Highland County’s mountain hollows to Hampton and Virginia Beach on the coast. The name itself is Virginia’s older claim on the animal: English colonists borrowed the word opossum from the Powhatan language.
North America’s only marsupial
An opossum’s young are born barely formed, each no bigger than a honeybee, and finish their development in the mother’s pouch before riding on her back. The adults are deliberate, generalist feeders, taking insects, carrion, fallen fruit, eggs, and garbage with a grasping hind foot and a prehensile tail. The famous death-feint is real but involuntary, a collapse into stillness under extreme fear rather than a considered trick. Records from Jefferson National Forest, Appomattox-Buckingham State Forest, and Shenandoah National Park show how thoroughly the species occupies Virginia’s woods as well as its towns.
Every month, despite a thin coat
Opossums do not hibernate, and Virginia’s record holds nearly level all year, with a mild April crest and no true off-season. That persistence is not effortless. The bare ears and tail that define the animal are prone to frostbite, and Virginia sits comfortably inside the species’ historic range, mild enough that winter rarely confines it for long.
Status in Virginia
NatureServe ranks the Virginia opossum S5, Secure, in the state, and the species is native here. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous.
Full species profile
