"J & A Haig" wrote:

Roger,

ours consistently jump 2-3m, and those that play football on our iron roof
like a running jump and my guess is they would do up to 5m. They tend to
climb walls at corners where they can grasp either side of the corner and it
seesm to be no trouble.

jim

Thank you for all for your suggestions. While I was pondering your answers, I
thought I would apply a little physics to the problem, and then I realized that
possums were controlled by the same laws of physics as schoolboys, and that in
the dim and distant past, when I was at high school, I was expected to be able
to clear something like 14 feet in the broad jump, and four feet in the high
jump. I was no athlete, but over short distances I could run at 15 mph, or
about 7m per second.

If we assume that a possum can run at 5m per second (on a roof, for example),
and can jump at the optimum angle, it should be able to clear about 2.5m
horizontally, or jump 1.2m vertically. If it jumped from the roof to something
2m below, it should be able to clear 3.2m, if it jumped horizontally, or nearly
4m if it jumped at the optimum angle.

Unfortunately both the trees I want to protect have conveniently placed
launching pads nearby, and have complex branch structures which make it
extremely difficult to fit guards above this level, so even if these
calculations are very optimistic, I fear I'll have to resort to other measures.



Roger Riordan AM