New York: You’ve Never Seen a Possum This Small in Your Life

There's small, and then there's unbelievably tiny. A animal rescue organization recently shared a video that has taken the internet by storm of an opossum baby (called a joey) so small that it's barely larger than the grape it's trying to eat.

Opossums might be the most misunderstood creature in New York's animal kingdom. As the only marsupial in North America, these fascinating creatures have much to offer the local ecosystem (even if their tick-fighting powers have been largely exaggerated), but they are often the victim of injuries from roaming pets and speeding cars. If mothers are killed or injured, their offspring (if they're lucky) find themselves in rehabilitation centers, like the tiny gals below.

Rescued Opossum Babies

The wildlife center shared that the opossum mother, named Penelope, had suffered injuries including a broken jaw and loss of an eye. To make matters more difficult, she was carrying eight tiny joeys. Unable to fully care for her babies, they were put in incubators to hopefully give them a chance for survival. The video below shows exactly how small these opossums actually are.

Possibly the most fascinating part of this video is that the joey is already nearly a month old. Still, the tiny baby can barely handle the grape half it was fed by rehabilitation workers. When they were first discovered, the tiny opossums weighed 18 grams. As of publication, the joeys weigh roughly 45 grams.

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Thanks to the wildlife rehabilitation centers across the United States, wild animals like these tiny opossum joeys are getting a second lease on life. From tangled deer to trapped birds, local heroes are caring for those that can't care for themselves.