By JESSE GRAHAM
HEALESVILLE Sanctuary’s vets had a big job to do on some tiny animals last week, tagging a litter of 12-week-old mountain pygmy possums.
Dr Jemima Amery-Gales was joined by vet nurse Emmajane Newton and senior keeper Paula Watson on Tuesday 13 January to microchip the four possums and take a blood sample from each of the animals.
This is a routine procedure, only the animals themselves were smaller than the palm of a hand and the syringes themselves were longer than the animals they were being used on.
Ms Watson said that the microchip was the same system as those put under the skin of dogs and cats.
“They all look the same, so it means we can socialise them with other animals and when we need to know who we’ve got in hand, we scan them,” she said.
“The blood test is to give us some normal values of what a normal mountain pygmy possum should look like.”
She said the sanctuary had about 60 of the critically endangered possums – almost as much as found in some of their key habitat sites in the wild, such as Mount Buller.
The animals are part of a captive breeding program, which aims to reduce the threat of the animal’s extinction.
Despite being knocked-out by general anaesthesia, all of the possums woke up within minutes and, while perhaps feeling a bit sore, seemed in good spirits.
