Animal With the Most Teeth - the Opossum!

With 50 pearly whites opossums, or possums as they're often called, have more teeth than any other North American land mammal. These unique, mostly nocturnal marsupials are generally docile creatures - unless cornered.
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When faced with a threat they typically stand their ground and bare their sharp teeth and hiss and snap their jaws to hopefully scare off enemies - because they really aren't practical for self-defense. Fortunately this tactic usually works.
Here, a mother opossum with young in her pouch fends off a large raccoon. Stand ground and bear teeth. Turning and “running” to use the term losely, for an opossum is not an option.

While Their razor-sharp teeth include four big canine fangs, opossums are slow creatures who aren't well equipped for conflict. They have a high mortality rate and rarely live more than a few years in the wild. Here a small opossum fends of a mother raccoon and kit and teaches the kit a valuable lesson it will remember. “Watch out for these strange creatures”

Opossum are omnivorous eating whatever is available - with so many varieties of sharp teeth for tearing, crushing and grinding they are able to feed opportunistically. That's one reason their species has survived on earth for 65 million years since dinosaurs roamed - because they can eat virtually anything they find.

Opossums also use their four fangs as climbing tools. They are great climbers -- with their prehensile tails, dexterous paws and gripping fangs.

The opossum has large, well-developed jaw muscles – you can see them in some of the videos. These jaws are capable of generating strong force and are used in crushing the shells of snails and bones of small mammals. Opossums have a great need for calcium in their diet and will consume skeletal remains of dead animals to satisfy this need.

I've sung the praises of opossums before, they are great Backyard neighbors, and this fascinating use of their tails to carry nesting material is just another example of their uniqueness. One of the most amazing animals in North America.

Opossums are often seen grooming and they do seem to enjoy displaying their teeth and exercising the full range of their jaws muscles through frequent yawning.
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