Sugar gliders eat eggs and insects, so sort of a predator.
Other things that could suggest intelligence besides being a predator.
Moving quickly in a complex environment (lost of quick delta-vs). I don’t think roos have to do a lot of quick zigging. But we don’t know their behavior without the thylacines and such around.
Also, big eyes. While mainly for night vision, big eyes also require a big brain* to process the info.
Gripping stuff. The better finger control, the smarter.
If I had a sugar glider I’d call it “Brett”, and say to it regularly “Check out the big brain on Brett!”
Recent studies of its brain confirms that it had a more complex brain than a Tasmanian Devil.
Tasmanian Devils are mainly scavengers, which probably takes less brain power than active predation. So although devils are a candidate for the smartest extant marsupial, it’s possible something like a quoll, which is an active hunter, might be smarter.
However, I have seen many documentary films that demonstrate that a Tasmanian Devil can easily be outsmarted by a Wascally Wabbit.
Not to be a squee-harsher, but opossums are generally held to be terrible pets, mainly because they have exacting nutritional requirements that are very hard to meet, otherwise they rapidly sicken and die.
They’re interesting beasts and I enjoy seeing them at a distance, just not having them make a winter nest in my shed.*
*I got a nasty shock when I raised the lid of a cardboard box that had shredded newspaper leaking out, thinking mice might be living in there. Instead it was a large opossum that raised his head and gave me a toothy grin. :eek:
I let him resume his nap. Later on I succeeded in live-trapping him and releasing him into the back of the yard. He got a nice sardine dinner out of the experience.
For some years we’ve had possums living under our front porch in the Bronx. (Interesting, because they weren’t in the area 50 years ago when I was a kid.) A couple of Thanksgivings ago I was shocked to find a dead one trapped in the wooden latticework around the base of the porch. She had been able to squeeze out to leave in the evening, but she had gotten so fat for the winter that she when she returned after eating that night she was too big to get through again and got stuck. She evidently died of hypothermia during the night. (Frankly, I was relieved to find a cold dead opossum rather than having to figure out how to extract one that was enraged and snapping.)
This is true, but nobody has measured a drop bear’s brain and survived to report the results. Drop bears leave no dead behind. But I probably shouldn’t have said that.
From the videos that another sanctuary posts (Sleepy Burrows Wombat Sanctuary), they know their names, are affectionate and playful and just generally goofy as hell.
They’ve been in the NYC area, probably just not in NYC itself. When we moved from the Bronx to Central Jersey, possums were here. It is possible they were in the Bronx 50 years ago but just less bold? They are native to New York.
This is true, but nobody has measured Cecil’s brain and survived to report the results. Cecil leaves no dead behind. But I probably shouldn’t have said that.
They weren’t originally native to New York, but have spread north from around Maryland since maybe 1900. They may well have been in rural and suburban areas by the 1950s. However, I spent a lot of time in parks like Pelham Bay Park and Bronx Park in the 1950s and 1960s and was keenly interested in natural history. The fact that I never saw or heard of opossums in the area implies that they weren’t present, at least in any numbers.
I think I first became aware that possums were present in my neighborhood in the Bronx about 10 years ago. This is an area of mostly one and two family houses with some apartment buildings, and lots of trees on the street and in backyards.
