Did You Know That Opossums Eat Virtually All the Ticks in Your Yard?

Craig Raleigh / Wide Open Spaces / February 3, 2020

… They’re often considered to be ugly pest animals with their hairless ears and hairless tails. Their weird feet with their opposable thumbs give some people the creeps. The opposum’s ability to munch down on the annoying blood-suckers took even researchers by surprise. 

“I had no suspicion they’d be such efficient tick-killing animals,” said Richard Ostfeld, of the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. …

Opossums are crazy, fastidious, grooming animals like cats, and when they find a tick, it’s right down the hatch. … Ostfeld said that one opossum can kill and eat some 5,000 ticks in a single season.

While they can’t get them all and certainly get bitten by a few, opossums will destroy some 90 percent of all the ticks they encounter.