Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-25118285-20160327152206/@comment-25118285-20160414171319

PCAwesomeness wrote: Adsper wrote: Aren't opossums supposed to actually be fairly intelligent? No; they actually have primitive brains. http://web.missouri.edu/~krausew/Histology/Home_files/opossum.pdf

"The opossum brain differs somewhat externally from a typical mammalian brain but in general the internal structure and pathways of its central nervous system show only minor differences from that of eutherian mammals. However, the external surface is smoother and has fewer folds and groves than the brains of eutherian mammals of similar size.

The opossum brain features a pair of large, elongated olfactory lobes, which is not surprising because of this animal's keen, well-developed sense of smell. The opossum brain like that of all other marsupials is characterized by one major distinction: the complete absense of a corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is a large band of nerve fibers that functions to connect the cortical areas of the two cerebral hemispheres of the eutherian brain."

"In spire of their apparent primitiveness and samm brain size, opossums have a remarkable capacity to find food and remember where it was found. When tested for theur ability to remember, opossums scored better than rats, rabbits, dogs, and cats but did not score as well as humans. Opossums can remember the taste of noxious or toxic substances even a year after a single encounter.

Visual discrimination tests have shown that the opossum can learn to discriminate black versus white, different colors, patterns, and geometric forms. Additional studies designed to measure the opossum's ability to solve maze problems indicate that mature opossums were superior to most species (rats, cats) in maze learning tasks."