Move over, city raccoon. There’s a new trash-loving scavenger in town.

Decades after the opossum first wandered north of the border in search of warm weather and garbage aplenty, the furry, long-snouted creature has become somewhat of a fixture in Toronto’s animal kingdom.

The number of opossums living in the GTA is unknown. But anecdotally, more and more of the animals — the only marsupials, pouched mammals, in North America — have been spotted across the region in recent years, according to Toronto Animal Services supervisor Mary Lou Leiher.

Believed to have originated in South America, the opossum began to move northward through the United States in the 1950s, a movement largely motivated by climate change, says Jeff Bowman, a research scientist with the Ministry of Natural Resources.

“It’s pretty clear based on data from opossum studies that they would expand to the north with warming climate,” Bowman said, noting that opossums will likely continue to trek further northward as temperatures continue to rise.

Though much of the year proves habitable for the GTA’s opossum population, the whims of Mother Nature are often cruel for the bare-tailed beast, unable to adapt to frigid temperature drops in winter months.

“They do still struggle with frostbite on ears and the tips of their tails,” said Nathalie Karvonen, executive director of the Toronto Wildlife Centre which treats dozens of opossums every year for frostbite.

Opossums can reach the size of a large house cat and are often confused with rats given their bare, scaly tail and long, whiskery snouts. Known for their nocturnal scavenging for anything from road kill to garbage to fruits and seeds, the animals share many similarities with nuisance-prone raccoons.

“Usually, what we hear is that people just don’t know what (opossums are). People don’t know what to expect with them,” Karvonen said, adding that such encounters sometimes spark unwarranted fear and concern.

“They are harmless and beneficial,” she said. “They clean up animals that die.”

William Krause, a University of Missouri anatomy professor who has researched opossums for biomedical studies since 1967, called them one of the most misunderstood, and underrated, creatures on the continent.

“People are a bit more tolerant today but the prejudices are still there. They really aren’t the fearsome animal they’re assumed to be. They’re gentle,” Krause said. “It breaks my heart . . . people are still frightened of them. It’s sad to say that if it looks like a rat, you want to kill it.”

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