pigeonfancier:rowantheexplorer:uncle-whisky:Wait hold up, tell me about the rabies resistanceThese f
pigeonfancier:rowantheexplorer:uncle-whisky:Wait hold up, tell me about the rabies resistanceThese fucking things. They have immune systems that will kill anything.They are marsupials, which means that they are underdeveloped when born and finish development in the mother’s pouch. What a lot of people don’t realize is that this means that unlike other mammals’ babies, marsupials’ immune system is completely undeveloped at birth, and develops over time via exposure while in the pouch. And opossums are exposed to a lot. They root around in corpses and garbage, they eat other things that died of diseases that straight up killed other mammals. Those little almost-fetal newborn opossums are exposed and develop immunities via the milk in the mother’s pouch basically being a world-class vaccine cocktail, granting immunity to everything the mother comes in contact with while doing her usual possuming life. The babies’ immune system organs haven’t even grown yet; those organs are taught from the start how to combat basically everything. See this article from NIH for a more scholarly rundown.Opossum body temperature is just too low for rabies and a few other illnesses to last for long. Opossums are 8 times less likely to catch rabies than feral dogs simply because the virus breaks down in the low temperature of the opossum’s body. And of course, owing to their badass immune system, once they’re exposed and survive, they’re immune.These fuckers are immune to shit like rattlesnake and other pit viper venom. The opossum’s low blood temperature is related to this. The enzymes in pit viper venom that would normally cause necrosis generally break down because of the low body temperature, and the rest can be purged by the opossum’s immune system and liver/kidneys.Possum blood has killed things like the flu and the common cold in lab studies. Scientists are still researching just how their immune system is so badass. They are currently mapping the opossum genome, because even compared to other marsupials with similar immuno-development processes, they are highly resistant to disease. Only Tasmanian Devils beat them in the immunology department for marsupials, and their immune system is in overdrive so bad that it gives them cancer when exposed to certain viruses.Because of the low body temperature, opossums are very susceptible to frostbite in their tails. Possums in northern climates tend to have short, stubby tails because the frostbite made them die and rot off. This of course bothers the possum very little, because their immune system never lets true gangrene set in.Now, this doesn’t mean you should handle wild opossums. Just because they’re immune to damn near everything doesn’t mean they’re not carriers. There are a lot of nasty diseases that opossums can carry that will never harm them but will ruin your day, with your weak, human immune system.@cumaeansibyl -- source link