In the marsupial family<\/a>, the opossum really got the short end of the stick: While their Australian cousins, including kangaroos<\/a>, koalas<\/a>, and wombats<\/a>, are adored by the masses, opossums are outcasts. They\u2019re the United States\u2019 only native marsupial, but they\u2019re virtually nobody\u2019s favorite animal. They aren\u2019t the star exhibit at any zoo. You almost certainly won\u2019t see them on the cover of any wildlife magazine. No one has ever squealed, \u201cTrash panda!,\u201d after spotting one digging through a garbage bin, as so many people\u00a0(somehow) lovingly do with raccoons.<\/p>\n …<\/p>\n Sure, they\u2019re ugly. They\u2019ve got beady eyes, a hairless tail, and dozens of pointed teeth. When Captain John Smith came to America in the 17th century, he wrote<\/a> that opossums have a head \u201clike a Swine,\u201d a tail \u201clike a Rat,\u201d and are about the size of a cat, which I must admit, is pretty spot-on. But opossums do more for us than we recognize. \u201cJust because they\u2019re ugly doesn\u2019t mean that they\u2019re not important and worthy of protecting,\u201d David Mizejewski, a naturalist at the National Wildlife Federation and author of the book Attracting Birds, Butterflies, and Other Backyard Wildlife<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0tells Mother Jones<\/em>. \u201cIf you just open your mind a little bit, you can see them as beautiful creatures.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, opossums protect humans by eating ticks, dead animals, and venomous snakes. As nature\u2019s trash collectors, they play a vital role in the ecosystem, all while protecting humans from disease. A 2009 study<\/a> published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences <\/i>found that opossums are exquisitely good at removing ticks, which can carry Lyme disease, from their bodies and gobble up an estimated<\/a> 5,000 ticks per season\u00a0that may otherwise latch onto humans.<\/p>\n Read the rest of this article in Mother Jones<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n
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