OPOSSUMS ARE MARSUPIALS. If you open just about any field guide to North American mammals, the opossum will probably be the very first of the 380 or so mammal species described. That's because opossums are our only marsupial, and marsupials are considered very ancient forms of mammals.
operator - an agent that operates some apparatus or machine; the operator of the switchboard. manipulator. causal agency, causal agent, cause - any entity that produces an effect or is responsible for events or results. company operator - an operator who works for a company. driver - the operator of a motor vehicle.
Not to be confused with the symbol denoting a mathematical operation. An operator is a mapping from one vector space or module to another. Operators are of critical importance to both linear algebra and functional analysis, and they find application in many other fields of pure and applied mathematics.