News

Middle-aged, grey-haired and up half the night; unusual qualities in a friend, yet Heidi, Leipzig Zoo''s two and a half-year-old cross-eyed opossum, has become the latest sensation on Facebook. With as many as 146,000 fans based all around the world, her success has also led to the release of a popular song on Youtube.

The zoo where Heidi resides in the Eastern German city of Leipzig had no idea she would achieve such international fame when she arrived from Denmark with her sister Naira and another male opossum in May last year.

The level of demand for information about Heidi has been such that the zoo has now dedicated a section of its website to answering questions about the opossum, such as why she is cross-eyed. Supervisors at the zoo believe is could be owing to a poor diet when she was very young, though there is now no risk to her health.

What is more, poor vision poses no difficulty to the opossum who, being a nocturnal creature, relies on her highly developed sense of smell in order to move around safely.

Heidi is the latest creature to rocket from Germany''s front pages to international recognition: Since the first photos were published in December, the marsupial from Leipzig Zoo has attracted more Facebook fans than Chancellor Angela Merkel with fans from as far away as Bangkok and Montreal and right across Europe.

Experts say that like Knut, Berlin''s famous fluffy white polar cub who was abandoned by his mother, and Paul, the late octopuswho correctly predicted the outcome of all of Germany''s 2010 World Cup games and Spain''s victory in the final, the hype surrounding Heidi is fed by a human weakness for cuddly looking critters and the ability of modern mass media to spread images around the globe instantly.