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Welcome to episode 14

by our patreon supporters. I am Ben Lemberd of the ringer joined by similar of ESPN closing

Hey Ben can I tell you about some possums? Yes, please thanks to some people who passed us on some information about possums and also

O possums

Mm-hmm different technically should be O possums, right? The ones we're talking about yeah technically. Yeah, yeah

All right, so two things that are key to this that I need to correct one is I thought it's so odd that they're the only animal that does this and

Placed dead and many animals have some version of playing dead. Yeah, but you didn't say what they do so I was saying what they do

Well, they play possums

Many animals have some form of playing dead and some even do something very similar many many of the playing

Deds are are fake they're under the we're gonna get to this but they're under the control of the animal

But some it's somewhat automatic

So for instance in the hog nose snake a threatened individual rolls onto its back and appears to be dead when threatened by a predator

While a foul smelling volatile fluid oozes from its body

Predators such as cats then lose interest in the snake which both looks and smells dead one reason for their loss of interest is that rotten smelling

Animals are avoided as a precaution against infectious diseases

So the snake is in this case exploiting that reaction

Newly hatched young also instinctively show this behavior when rats try to eat them

So so to go back to the to the opossum specifically yes the the opossum here here

There's a few things one is they are not playing dead at all

This is an automatic response them they go into shock and so I'm reading this this is an article by Bethany Foster at

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