The cuscus shows a set of features that arboreal primates also carry: forward-facing eyes giving overlapping fields of view for judging distance between branches, a strongly prehensile tail whose lower half is naked and roughened for grip, and hands in which the digits oppose each other to clamp a branch. Its unhurried, deliberate climbing reinforces the impression.
The underlying animal is a phalangerid possum, a marsupial. Females carry young in a forward-opening pouch, and there is no primate anywhere in the native fauna of New Guinea or Australia. Adults reach roughly 35 to 65 centimetres in head-and-body length and are largely solitary and nocturnal, though they are sometimes active in dull daylight.
The species is hunted for meat and fur across much of New Guinea. It remains listed as Least Concern because its range is large and it tolerates secondary forest, but local depletion around settlements is well documented and the Australian population at Cape York is small and peripheral.