Animal of the week: an opossum can film better than football players

In football some players have a habit of playing injured and thus fishing for punishments on the opponent. This is called filming.

In a typical model performance, the “injured” player dramatically falls to the ground, writhing, moaning and holding his limb. The intensity of the presented emotional scale depends on the acting skills of the player.

Also animals are filming. The best performance is given by the virginia opossum.

The show has many stages. First, the opossum ruffles its fur. Then it starts grimacing, hissing and drooling.

If this is not enough, the opossum crawls to the ground and pretends to be dead. It sticks its tongue out and lies completely motionless.

To enhance the effect, the opossum begins to drain a very foul-smelling, green liquid from its anal glands. At this point at the latest, the Football Referee would be quite surprised.

With an opossum it is, of course, a means of defense against predators. If it succeeds believably enough to play dead, the predator goes on its way and the opossum gets to keep its life.

However, filming can result in a punishment, also for the opossum. If a pack of animals happens to wander into the middle of the highway, you can go limp.

The opossum cannot regulate its behavior, it is an involuntary reflex, in the same way that a deer freezes in the headlights. Freezing in place prevents the predator from detecting movement.

With Opossum, the display has developed to be more multidimensional. It has even given a name to this filming in the animal kingdom. In English, “to play possum” means pretending to be dead.

I can also ruled by the raccoon. Filming has also been found with snakes and frogs.

If a female frog doesn’t feel like having sex, it doesn’t mean she has a headache. It pretends to be dead. This was observed in the study a couple of years ago.

The mating of common brown frogs was monitored in the laboratory. One female flopped dead in the back when approached by an unpleasant claw. When the fat Romeo had left the place, the girl perked up and jumped on her way.