Is it Possible to Keep an Opossum as a Pet?

The trend of keeping exotic animals in the home is becoming more and more widespread. Sometimes this trend comes from aesthetic preferences or ostentation, but sometimes it comes from people’s good will. This is the case when choosing to have an opossum as a pet, an animal that until now was considered vermin and people even tried to kill them when they appeared near homes.

If you’re considering having one of these marsupials in your home, you must first consider several aspects that will condition its life and yours. In this article, you’ll have an overview of what it means to take care of an opossum, as well as legal aspects that you must take into account. Keep reading!

Opossum characteristics

The first thing we need to do is to get to know this animal better. The opossum (Didelphis virginiana) is a mammal belonging to the family Didelphidae. It’s one of the oldest marsupials on the planet, as the oldest fossils of this animal date back to more than 65 million years ago, near the extinction of the dinosaurs.

They aren’t very large mammals, but the sexual dimorphism in this regard is remarkable: while females are around 15 centimeters long (6 inches) without counting the tail, while males reach 40 centimeters (16 inches). The female also has a marsupium, the external pouch in which the young finish gestation after the intrauterine period.

They’re harmless animals, but with great energy and a somewhat unpredictable character. They’re somewhat clumsy when walking on the ground, although they climb marvelously,  (they live in the trees of the forests of the American continent).

Is it legal to keep an opossum as a pet?

Many factors influence the legality of keeping an animal in captivity: the conservation status of the species, legislation of the country on this issue, economic interests, and much more. Therefore, to find out if it’s legal to keep an opossum as a pet, you’ll have to find out about the current regulations in your region.

Handley’s slender opossum (Marmosops handleyi), for example, is endemic to Colombia and is critically endangered, so its possession is prohibited.

In some European countries, there’s no law against keeping an opossum as a pet. However, this animal is not endemic to Europe, and so you’d have to buy one and import it through the relevant legal process.

In some regions of the Americas, there are wildlife rehabilitation programs that allow the general public to keep an opossum in their home. This will usually require a special permit, volunteering, or passing a training exam to make it legal.

The problem of keeping an opossum as a pet

When someone wishes to purchase an exotic animal that isn’t native to their region, they most often have to resort to breeders or to import the animal. This practice involves many factors.

• The future pet will have been taken from the wild.
• If it comes from a breeding farm, it’s very likely not to have lived in good conditions.
• During the journey to the buyer’s home, the animal will suffer great stress and, probably, physical injuries.
• Some breeders and traffickers make contracts of assignment instead of purchase to avoid legal problems during their activity.
• Abandoning or letting the animal escape means it could become an invasive species in the region where it’s living. An example of this is the colonies of alien raccoons in Madrid, Spain.
• If you buy exotic animals, you may be contributing money to the illegal species trade (even if the one you are purchasing is legal in your region).

If you live in the Americas, you may be able to welcome an opossum into your home, as it’s a native animal that can be found anywhere from Canada to Argentina. However, even if you have the permit, having one of these animals isn’t easy, as you can see in the following section.

Does an opossum live well in a home?

As you can imagine, after all you’ve read so far, the answer is no. Here are the most important reasons:

1. The opossum is an omnivorous and opportunistic animal. Its diet includes fruit, grasses, insects, small rodents, and even dead animals. In captivity, this is very difficult to recreate, so nutritional imbalances are frequent in these animals.
2. Their life expectancy is very short. In the wild, they usually live about 3-4 years, and this can be twice as long in captivity with proper care. However, confinement causes them such stress that they often fall ill despite all the efforts of the caregiver.
3. Health problems: The stress of captivity weakens the opossum’s immune system, causing bacterial diseases. Pet opossums are prone to develop cataracts, obesity and muscular atrophy.
4. They’re usually harmless animals, but sometimes they become aggressive. Like any other living creature deprived of its freedom, it may feel it must defend itself and it may end up biting or attacking its buyer.
5. Most veterinarians don’t have the necessary knowledge to treat these animals: Being such an unusual species in homes, the resources that exist in terms of treatment and care are very scarce.

The importance of social networking responsibility

One last thing needs to be pointed out when it comes to having a pet opossum. In their place of origin, many people take in one of these animals as part of a rehabilitation program or when they aren’t recoverable. However, the dissemination of images of opossums on the net is often misinterpreted as that person having a strange animal in their home for fun, and that is where the fad is born.

While these images on social networks help to remove the stigma attached to these beings and show their gentler side, it’s everyone’s responsibility to understand that animals should remain in their natural environment. Before acquiring any pet (exotic or not), make sure that it will live a happy life by your side and that no one has taken it from its natural habitat.