Congratulations for making it to another Friday! After all your hard work this week, you deserve to kick your feet up, grab a beer (or a glass of wine) and learn all about the amazing Yapok. What’s so amazing about this Water Opossum? For starters it is an Opossum that likes water! We will get into the rest of their cool characteristics shortly. In the meantime, let’s figure out where our imagination will be taking us today. Buckle up as we are heading to the freshwater lakes and streams located in Central and South America. Make sure you pack an extra pair of socks since there is a pretty good chance you will get wet looking for this little Opossum.
101 Uses for a Pouch
So what else makes the Yapok so interesting? Let’s see, they are the only animal species in the world that have a pouch. Right now you should be yelling at me that this isn’t true since Kangaroos and other marsupials have pouches. This is where i would kindly point out that I haven’t quite finished my sentence yet. They are the only species where both the female and male have pouches. That’s right, the male Yapok also has a handy, dandy pouch. Why? Because they kept losing their car keys so they figured this would be a great solution. Okay, I am obviously just playing with you but the real answer is requires a delicate response so I was trying to find a way to nicely tell you that the males place their genitalia inside their pouch while swimming. It is believed that this helps streamline the swimming Opossum. And it also ensures that no sensitive body parts get caught in the seaweed that the Yapok is always swimming through. For the record, I am not joking about any of this!
Thrill of the Hunt
During the day our little marsupial friend prefers to stay hidden in burrows but once the night falls they head out to the lakes and rivers for a little hunting. Believe it or not, this opossum is very well adapted to the water. For example, they have webbed feet, waterproof fur and that useful little carrying pouch will actually become watertight while submerged. So if you are a fish, crustacean or amphibian living in the home range of the Yapok, you had better be alert once the sun goes down because the Water Opossum is perfectly suited to hunt you down.
