In the United States and Canada, the only species found is the Virginia opossum, and it is generally referred to as a "possum".

Although all living opossums are essentially opportunistic omnivores, different species vary in the amount of meat and vegetation they include in their diet.

The water opossum or yapok (Chironectes minimus) is the only living marsupial in which both sexes have a pouch. The Tasmanian tiger also exhibited this trait, but it is now believed to be extinct.

The Virginia opossum actually originated in South America and entered North America in the Great American Interchange following the connection of the two continents.

Male opossums are known as Jack and females are Jill.

Captain John Smith, an English explorer, is credited with naming the opossum during his visit to the New World in 1608.

Opossums are symbols of fertility in some Mexican tribes, and a drink made with an opossum's tail is still used by some Nahuatl women as folk medicine to help deliver babies.

In Canada and the US, opossums are the only marsupials. Like other marsupials, mother possums give birth to tiny, underdeveloped offspring (called joeys) that immediately crawl into a pouch where they live and nurse during their first months of life.

Opossums may give birth to as many as 20 babies in a litter, but fewer than half of them survive. Opossums reproduce twice a year and gestation lasts just 12 to 13 days.

Joeys are about 12.5mm (less than 1/2") long, or approximately the size of a jelly bean when born.