Thread: Unusual possum tail ??

All my years chasing possums I can't remember ever seeing a tail like this....
Any one else seen odd colouring like this ?
This came off a silver grey as can be seen at the top of the tail as it starts to turn black and was otherwise normal .
Even the skin under the fur had a distinct line that went from black under the black fur to pure white under the pale fur . The fur also looked white under torch light but is about the same colour as the pale white/yellow tinged fur normally just on belly .
So I cut it off and tanned it and it will probably end up decorating my summer hunting cowboy hat along with my hawk feather....

Yes I have. When I was trapping them at home I caught 3 or 4 like that, all in the same area. I assumed they were all related


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Yes have seen the odd one like that.

As above, unusual variations tend to be in patches.

If you keep them long enough they look like this

yip seen a few like that...the weirdest coloration we would get...and we had shite loads of possums on home farm was what we called tazzie devils...they were blacks with the pale cream markings normally seen on greys....Dad got one that had a purple hue to fur,he got over $40 from Dalgetys auction for that one..more than double the going rate.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

yip seen a few like that...the weirdest coloration we would get...and we had shite loads of possums on home farm was what we called tazzie devils...they were blacks with the pale cream markings normally seen on greys....Dad got one that had a purple hue to fur,he got over $40 from Dalgetys auction for that one..more than double the going rate.

I got a purple possum once in my traps a couple or 3 decades ago, cool looking animal.

Originally Posted by Cigar

I got a purple possum once in my traps a couple or 3 decades ago, cool looking animal.

Guess they been munching the local Purple haze

These two have been sitting around here for years.

The other side

Got one on Friday that had three pale spots on its back, like a reverse dalmation

Get it classed as a new species, that'd f**k up DoC's day.

I've seen one and I'm not real experienced with thousands of possums.
Perhaps its more common in some areas than others.

yep - more colours out there than you can shake a stick at - and I've never seen an albino or near albino with a decent skin, they all look like they got mange. Did get quire a few in the one area that had tails like that - so family genetics at work.
The wierdest ones I got, again all in the same area were a 'watery' colour - not albino but very pale - and again they all had thin fur which was probably ticks or mites.
I've also caught possums that were on the edge of bald but only around Rotorua - fur agent said they were pumice mites, but I always reckoned they were just standard mite. Those ones died in the trap, once inactive the cold killed them.