Heidi, Your Eyes Will Stick Like That

Germany has kind of cornered the market when it comes to making animals into superstars on the Internet.  Germany was the home of Paul the psychic octopus and Knut the polar bear, the godfather of Internet animal sensations.  Germany’s Leipzig Zoo is home to two more weird animals that have become viral stars:  the bald bespectacled bears and the cross-eyed opossum.  That’s right, Heidi the cross-eyed opossum is the latest Internet superstar.

Heidi, her sister Naira, and another opossum named Teddy have become superstars in Leipzig thanks to Heidi’s unusual medical condition.  It is believed Heidi’s crossed eyes are the result of her diet as a younger opossum or due to her weight issues, but her weird eyes aren’t the most unusual thing about Heidi’s story.  Heidi and Naira were actually left at an animal shelter in North Carolina as young possums before somehow ending up across the world in a German zoo.

Heidi and the possums are in Gondwanaland, a new area of the zoo.  It was when press photographers were taking pictures of the new zoo area that they discovered the latest animal star in the canon.  Heidi, despite her weight and eyes, is in perfect health, according to zoo officials.

“Apart from aesthetically, this situation is not a problem,” maintains the zoo.  ”As animals that are active at night, opossums find their way around using their noses.”