Category: Mammals
This small species of fox is native to the Arctic region of the Northern Hemisphere. Its dense coat, which is white in winter and brown and in summer serves double duty as insulator and camouflage. The arctic fox is an omnivore that will eat any small creature it can catch, as well as carrion, berries, seaweed, and almost anything else from which it can derive nutrition. Its exceptionally keen hearing enables the arctic fox to hunt small animals burrowing underneath the snow.
The Opossum Ain’t Playing
Many people associate playing dead with the opossum - that’s where the term “playing opossum” comes from, after all. But something you might not know is that when an opossum feigns death, it really goes all out! Not content with merely closing its eyes and laying down, the opossum begins drooling profusely as if ill or even rabid, releases a putrid, greenish fluid from its anal glands that makes it smell like a decaying corpse, and after losing consciousness may even mimic rigor mortis! This is quite the elaborate routine, but it isn’t conscious: when an opossum plays dead, it has actually gone into shock due to stress.
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