You’ve seen what happens to opossums when they die, and it’s disgusting, isn’t it? Which is why you probably don’t want to go near the limp, drooling, self-soiled body of an animal that might be dead. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why opossums play dead.

Most animals, much like people, want to avoid nasty corpses because they carry diseases and are filthy. By eating the corpse, an animal runs the risk of getting sick and dying, so most will choose to turn the other way – a fact that the opossum is counting on. By playing dead, the opossum’s predators will think that it carries a disease and will naturally avoid it to go search for other prey, thus saving the opossum’s life.

That’s why playing dead is just another defense mechanism for the opossum. Yet the most interesting fact about playing dead is that opossums have no control over it. That’s right, the animals known for “playing possum” can’t decide when to play dead. Instead, this naturally happens whenever they get very frightened, and their brains automatically send them into a coma-like state for up to a few hours.

Opossums may involuntarily play dead by going limp, beginning to drool, and defecating themselves as a defense mechanism, but this doesn’t always lead to a happy ending. They might fall into the catatonic state at the wrong time, leading to plenty of harm or even death.