When the opossum feels threatened, she becomes paralyzed. Her body temperature plummets, her breathing and heart rates drop to a minimum, and her glands simulate the smell of a putrefying corpse.
“Playing Possum” explores what the opossum and other creatures can teach us about how we and other species understand mortality.
With humor and empathy, Susana Monsó tells the stories of ants who attend their own funerals, chimpanzees who clean the teeth of their dead, dogs who snack on their caregivers and crows who avoid the places where they saw a carcass.
