Green Ringtail Possum (Pseudochirops archeri) of Northeastern Australia's Queensland Region

Scientists accept striped ringtail possum and toolah as additional common names for the green ringtail possum. They acknowledge Pseudochirops archeri as the current scientific name. The genus emphasizes the housecat-sized mammal’s “false hands” so unlike feline paws. The species honors the northeastern Australia-exploring and settling, Norwegian-Scottish sons of timber merchant William Archer (November 16, 1786 – March 2, 1869) and Julia Walker (November 29, 1791 – April 1880), niece of the owner (1787 – July 8, 1854) of Sydney’s William Walker & Co.:

• Charles (1813 – 1862);
• John (1814 – 1857);
• David (1816 – January 8, 1900);
• William (1818 – June 25, 1896);
• Archibald (March 18, 1820 – February 6, 1902);
• Thomas (February 27, 1823 – December 9, 1905);
• Colin (July 22, 1832 – February 8, 1921).

The species name betrays the nationality of the green ringtail possum’s first known official describer and namer, Robert Collett (December 2, 1842 – January 27, 1913). The Norwegian zoologist particularly committed to collecting fish, mammals and spiders while staffing the University of Oslo’s Natural History Museum as:

• Curator, 1864-;
• Director, 1882-;
• Professor, 1884-.

He had access to skins and skulls of green ringtail possums thanks to the meticulous field research of Fåberg-born Norwegian ethnographer and explorer Carl Sofus Lumholtz (April 23, 1851 – May 5, 1922). Carl journeyed to Australia in 1880 and researched indigenous life and peoples in north Queensland’s Herbert-Burdekin region between 1882 and 1883. Robert made his description and identification of Carl’s specimens official in 1884.

Carl’s specimens are from the Bellenden Ker Mountain Range and Lower Herbert River regions of Far North Queensland. Since 1988, both habitats benefit from incorporation of 230,927.39 acres (893,453 hectares) of coastal and near-coastal tropical rainforests as a Wet Tropics Site in the World Heritage Programme administered through the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee considers the area as meeting all four inclusion criteria:

• Ecologically diverse;
• Environmentally threatened;
• Evolutionarily insightful;
• Naturally beautiful.

But scientists currently describe populations as reduced in numbers and occurrence. Green ringtails do not frequent elevations below 984.25 feet (300+ meters). Their territory extends 31.07 miles (50 kilometers) south of Ingham to 74.56 miles (120 kilometers) northwest of Cairns.

Green ringtail habitats abound with a tropical rainforest’s leafy, tall trees and tanged, thornless vines. Alternative niches along forest edges and in secondary-regrowth forests also accommodate environmental preferences. Fragmented habitats without continuous canopies answer to green ringtail survival needs as long as trees for exercising, feeding, and sheltering include:

• Candlenuts (Aleurites rockinghamensis);
• Plentiful (Ficus copiosa) and white sandpaper (Ficus fraseri) figs;
• Rose tamarinds (Arytera divaricate).

Acceptable alternatives and supplements appear to include:

• Flame kurrajong (Brachychiton acerifolius);
• Gympie stinger (Dendrocnide moroides);
• Pepperwood (Cinnamomum laubatii);
• Red tulip oak (Tarrietia argyrodendron);
• Shining-leafed stinging (Dendrocnide photinophylla).

A tree’s mature height assumes importance similar to that of species since foraging generally gets conducted no lower than 44.29 feet (13.5 meters) above ground.  

Green ringtail territories appeal to predators:

• Carpet pythons (Morelia spilota);
• Rufous owls (Ninox rufa);
• Tiger quolls (Dasyurus maculatus).

Green possums appear vulnerable since they do not build nests, hide in hollows, or sleep in dens. But despite living out of tree forks, they counter with:

• Agility, as Australia's fastest ringtail possum;
• Muteness, as the island-continent's non-vocal, quietest ringtail;
• Subterfuge, as a giant fig by curling body parts belly-wards, digging each hind hallux (“big toe”) into bark, and tying everything up with a dark, prehensile, tapering, white-tipped tail.

Pale under-parts, two silvery back stripes, and white patches under rounded big eyes and small ears fade into sunlit bark. Black-, silver-, and yellow-colored fur grizzles to lime-green or olive-grey. 

Life at ground-level only gets experienced if one tree’s branches cannot be bridged from another’s. Green possums hurry down one trunk and immediately up the other. Their arboreal lifestyle is not as challenged as those of other rainforest-dwellers since:

• Disturbed, fragmented habitats are acceptable;
• Green ringtails avoid season-dependent young leaves for fiber-rich, nutrient-poor mature foliage;
• Loggers leave fig trees standing.

Green possums therefore keep arboreal, nocturnal cycles that:

• Accommodate solitary living in overlapping home ranges;
• Emphasize breeding peaks every June and July;
• Let females carry one annually-born offspring in their front pouches, August to December, and on their backs, October to April.

Green ringtail females indeed set records in terms of longest back-riding times enjoyed by offspring.

Mature sizes are no defense for the smaller-sized female or larger-sized male green ringtails:

• Ear length 0.91 – 1.02 inches (23 – 26 millimeters);
• Head-and-body length 11.22 – 14.84 inches (285 – 377 millimeters);
• Tail length 12.6 inches (320 millimeters);
• Weight 37.53 – 39.47 - 47.62 ounces (1064 – 1,350).

Green possums claim grinding-oriented mouthfuls of:

• 6 incisors, 2 canines, 6 premolars, and 8 molars equally distributed between left and right upper jaws;
• 4 incisors, 6 premolars, and 8 molars evenly divided between left and right lower jaws.

Survival usually demands just darting off. Agile escapes often may work except against bush- or wild-fires, especially in December when offspring just out of the pouch weight mothers down.

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Tablelands Region, Far North Queensland: Greg Schechter, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/17004938@N00/3624285373/

Fotograf / Photographer: Robert Collett (1842-1913): Nasjonalbiblioteket (National Library of Norway), No known copyright restrictions, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/national_library_of_norway/6981537427/

Distribution data from IUCN Red List: Chermundy/ IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, species assessors and the authors of the spatial data, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Green_Ringtail_Possum_area.png

"Arytera divaricata foliage showing the bright red new growth.": Mark Marathon, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arytera_divaricata_new_growth.jpg

mossed Illawarra Flame Tree (Brachychiton acerifolius), Bunya Mountains National Park, southern Queensland: Tatiana Gerus, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brachychiton_acerifolius_001-_Flame_Tree_-_by_Tatters.jpg

Healesville Sanctuary, Healesville, southeastern Victoria: arndbergmann, CC BY SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dasyurus_maculatus_-Healesville_Sanctuary,_Australia-8a.jpg; via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/22355135@N05/2241336392

Proceedings of Scientific Meetings of the Zoological Society of London for the Year 1884 (May 20), Plate XXIX, between pages 380-381: Public Domain, via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/28690269

bush fire at Captain Creek central Queensland Australia, December 2010: 80 trading 24, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bush_fire_at_Captain_Creek_central_Queensland_Australia..JPG

australiaTKMG. "Green Ringtail Possum." YouTube, Jan. 12, 2008, @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBX5gjkeqFQ

Gympie-gympie is another Australian common name for Dendrocnide moroides.: Udo Schröter, CC BY SA 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/89637257@N00/5026588177

heritage-listed Curtain Fig Tree (Ficus virens); Tablelands Region, Far North Queensland: Martin Gloss (Markdoe), CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Curtain_Fig_Tree,_Queensland,_Australia.JPG

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