No, the North American Virginia Opossums' tongues are "smooth and soft like velvet", according to a wildlife rehabilitator who specializes in 'possum rescue, rehabilitation, and reintroduction to the wild.
More interesting Virginia 'possum facts:
- They are the only North American marsupial.
- Like other marsupials, they have a pouch in which the babies mature.
- They have a toe on their back feet that is like an opposable thumb which helps them move among tree branches.
- They also have a prehensile tail that they can use to assist in stability and movement among the trees (although they do not swing from branches by their tails).
- They have a bifurcated reproductive system, meaning the males have a two pronged penis and the females have two vaginas.
- They are omnivorous. They eat mice, rats, and snakes and are helpful for control of these vermin. They love snails, fruits, eggs, crickets and other insects.
- 'Possums have some resistance to rabies and present a lower threat to humans from zoonotic disease than many other species of American wildlife.
- They don't have a long lifespan, typically living only to around age 2 in the wild, 4 in captivity.
- Wildlife rehabilitators know that there may be a pouch full of babies that have survived when the mother has been killed on a road or highway, so they will stop and check the pouches. If there are babies (they usually stay in the pouch attached to a nipple for two and a half months), they are collected and raised by hand by these dedicated workers, taught how to catch and gather food, and other survival skills until they can be released in the wild.
- Facts found about Virginia 'possums' name at WikiPedia (see link below for more):
"The Virginia Opossum is the original animal named "opossum". The word comes from Algonquian 'wapathemwa' meaning "white animal", not from Greek or Latin, so the plural is opossums. Colloquially, the Virginia Opossum is frequently called simply possum. The name is applied more generally to any of the other marsupials of the Didelphimorphia and Paucituberculata orders, which includes a number of opossum species in South America.
The possums of Australia, whose name is derived from a similarity to the Virginia Opossum, are also marsupials, but of the order Diprotodontia."
- When threatened, they may "play dead" or "play 'possum", this is when they pretend to be dead so that predators will leave to find "live" prey.
- There are fossil records of Opossums that go back 70 million years.