Rainforest Biodiversity Guide

Scientific Name: Monodelphis domestica

Category: Animal

Primary Layer: Understory

Fun Facts:

• The smallest of the opossums, less than a foot long when fully grown.
• Monodelphis domestica, the gray short-tailed opossum, is native to Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina, but has found its way to North America as a common biomedical laboratory test animal.
• Monodelphis is an excellent taxon to study postnatal development of the mammalian skeleton because the young are born 14 days after conception.