Anybody have trouble with possums chewing off each others tails?

[raccoonmom]

We got in a litter of 9 babies last fall. Everything went well until they were about 12-14 weeks old. They started chewing on each others tails. They had tons of room, lots of food and we don't know why they did that.
We talked to one opossum rehabber and she said that she said that some of them just did that and she didn't know why. The only thing she found to work was to seperate them all when they started bothering each other.
Just wondered if anybody else had any input before we get more babies this spring.

[MissDolittle]

Wow! No I never heard of that nor did I ever had it happen. I'm curious to learn more about this!

[Bear]

Me neither

[possumsrus]

Metabolic bone disease can causes Cannibalism in opossums. Any form of cannibalism means someone is sick. Did you deworm them, and give prophylactic antibiotics. Something as simple as feeding to much fruit, or protein can cause it. For a animal that can eat anything in the wild, there diet is so specific in captivity. Another cause could be a mistaken bite to a littermate which exposes blood than the blood lust begins and they all go wild, similar to the first time they get crickets or mealworms.

One more cause could be Dermal Septic Necrosis. The tail looks like some one has chewed on it , here is a link with some info and pictures.

http://www.opossum.org/commonmedical.html#dsn[/url]

[MissDolittle]

Thanks for the info!! That some interesting stuff!