Raccoon

The raccoon, Procyon lotor, is a carnivoran mammal of the family Procyonidae, and the largest member of that family. Its closest relatives are the ringtail and the coatis, and other cousins include the crab eating raccoon of Central and South America, which overlaps with it in Panama, and the Cozumel raccoon, a small species that lives only on the island of Cozumel in Mexico. Despite the bushy tail and the masked face, raccoons are not related to bears, although Carl Linnaeus first named the species Ursus lotor, the washer bear, in 1758. The scientific name means roughly doglike washer. The English word comes from the Powhatan language of Virginia, written down by John Smith as aroughcun, and is usually translated as an animal that scratches with its hands. The Spanish name mapache comes from the Nahuatl mapachtli, the one that takes everything in its hands, and the German Waschbär means washing bear. Many island raccoons of the Caribbean, such as those of Guadeloupe and the Bahamas, were once described as separate species, but genetic studies have shown that they descend from raccoons from the mainland. In North America the animal is also known by nicknames such as coon and, more recently, trash panda, a nod to its love of garbage bins.

A raccoon measures 40 to 70 centimeters from nose to rump, plus a tail of 20 to 40 centimeters, usually about 25, and stands 23 to 30 centimeters at the shoulder. Most adults weigh 5 to 12 kilograms, but size changes a lot across the range and through the year. Males are about 15 to 20 percent heavier than females. The smallest raccoons live in southern Florida, where some subspecies weigh only 1.8 to 2.7 kilograms, while the largest live in the north. The heaviest wild raccoon on record weighed 28.4 kilograms and measured 140 centimeters in total length. Those famous photos of very fat raccoons have a real explanation. In autumn, raccoons in cold regions eat as much as they can and store fat, and by the start of winter one can weigh twice as much as it did in spring. That fat is what keeps it alive during weeks of snow, when it barely leaves its den, so a round raccoon in November is usually a healthy one. Raccoons that live near people and eat garbage or pet food can also become heavier than their wild neighbors. The body is compact, with short legs, a broad head, small rounded ears and a pointed snout, and the hind legs are longer than the front ones, which gives the raccoon its hunched walk.

The raccoon's black mask, the bandit's mask, is its best known feature. It runs across the eyes and cheeks, is often split by a brownish black streak from the forehead to the nose, and is edged with white above the eyes and around the muzzle. Scientists think the dark fur may reduce glare and help the raccoon see better at night. The tail is bushy and banded with alternating light and dark rings, which makes it easy to recognize even from behind. The coat is mostly gray, sometimes brownish, and almost 90 percent of it is dense underfur that keeps the animal warm in cold weather. Color varies more than many people expect. Raccoons from some regions are browner or darker overall, and very dark animals are more common in Germany because some of the first raccoons released there were dark. Rare color variants also turn up in the wild. Albino raccoons, with white fur and pink eyes, are seen from time to time, as in Florida, and they stand out so much that they are easier for predators to spot. Other unusual coats, often called blonde, cinnamon or cotton candy raccoons, come from leucism or other genetic changes that reduce pigment without making the eyes pink. All of them are the same species.

Raccoons are native to North and Central America, from southern Canada through the United States and Mexico to Panama. They are absent from Hawaii, and in Canada they have spread north and west since the 1950s, from Vancouver Island into four south central provinces. Their original home was deciduous and mixed forest, but they now live in almost every habitat that offers water and shelter, from coastal marshes, mangroves and river valleys to prairie edges, farmland, mountains and the hearts of large cities. Water is the common thread, since much of their food comes from streams, ponds and shorelines. Density depends on the habitat: from 0.5 to 3.2 per square kilometer on the prairies and up to about 6 in upland forests, to more than 20 in lowland forests and marshes. In cities they can be even more crowded. They were first noticed in the suburbs of Cincinnati in the 1920s, and today Toronto, Washington and many other cities have large populations, with home ranges as small as 3 hectares for urban females. The North American population in the late 1980s was estimated at 15 to 20 times what it had been in the 1930s. Outside the Americas, introduced raccoons now live wild in much of Europe, the Caucasus and Japan, as well as on several Caribbean islands.

Europe's raccoons began with a handful of animals. In April 1934, two pairs were released at the Edersee lake in Hesse, Germany, two weeks before official permission arrived, to enrich local hunting. In 1945, about 25 more escaped from a fur farm at Wolfshagen, east of Berlin, after an air raid. From these and later releases, Germany's population grew from 285 animals in Hesse in 1956 to more than 20,000 in 1970 and over a million by 2012, and hunters shot 128,100 in the 2015 to 2016 season alone. Raccoons spread into every neighboring country, and other groups started from escaped pets: in France, American soldiers released their mascots near Laon in 1966, and Madrid has had raccoons since the early 1970s. Since 2016 the raccoon has been on the European Union list of invasive species of concern. In the Soviet Union, more than 1,200 raccoons were released between 1936 and 1962, mainly in the Caucasus, where about 20,000 lived by 1974. Japan's invasion came from television: after the anime Rascal the Raccoon aired in 1977, up to 1,500 raccoons a year were imported as pets, and many were abandoned. By 2008 raccoons had been recorded in all 47 prefectures, where they damage crops and prey on native amphibians and crayfish.

The raccoon can be confused with Japan's tanuki because both have a dark mask around the eyes, but they belong to different animal families. The tanuki, or raccoon dog, has a dark mask around the eyes and a bushy coat, but it is not a raccoon at all: it is a wild member of the dog family, Canidae, native to East Asia, including Japan, China, Korea and the Russian Far East. The raccoon belongs to a different family, Procyonidae, and arrived in Japan only in the twentieth century as an introduced species. In Japanese the raccoon is called araiguma, the washing bear, while the tanuki has been part of Japanese folklore for centuries, as a shapeshifting trickster whose cheerful statues stand outside many restaurants and shops. There are simple ways to tell them apart. The raccoon has a ringed tail, long nimble fingers that it uses like hands, and a mask that forms a single band across the face. The tanuki has a short tail without rings, doglike paws, and dark patches under the eyes that look more like smudges. Raccoons climb trees easily, while tanukis rarely climb. In Japan the introduced raccoon now competes with the native tanuki for food and dens. The raccoon dog has also been introduced into Europe, where both animals now live in some of the same countries.

Raccoons are true omnivores, and few animals eat a wider range of food. On average, their diet is roughly 40 percent invertebrates, 33 percent plant matter and 27 percent vertebrates, though the mix changes a lot with season and place. In spring and early summer they eat many insects, worms, crayfish, snails, mussels and other small animals, and they search streams and ponds for frogs, fish and turtle eggs. They also take bird eggs and nestlings when they can reach them. In late summer and autumn they turn to fruits, berries, acorns, walnuts, pecans and grains, building up the fat they need for winter. Raccoons are well known for raiding farms: a study at Purdue University found that they caused 87 percent of the damage to corn plants in the fields studied. They also visit vineyards, orchards and gardens, and in cities they open trash cans, compost bins and pet food bowls. Much of their foraging is done by touch, feeling under stones and in shallow water with their sensitive front paws. Feeding raccoons is a bad idea: it draws them close to houses, crowds many animals into small areas where diseases spread more easily, and teaches them to lose their fear of people. In many cities and states, feeding wild raccoons is discouraged or banned.

Touch is the raccoon's most important sense. Its front paws have five long fingers without webbing, and although there is no opposable thumb, they can grasp, turn and open things with surprising skill. Almost two thirds of the part of the raccoon's brain that processes sensory information is devoted to touch, more than in any other animal studied. Sensitive whiskers just above the claws even let it identify objects before touching them. The skin of the paws is covered by a thin horny layer that becomes softer and more sensitive when wet, and this is the key to the famous washing. In the wild, raccoons dabble in shallow water to feel for crayfish and other prey. Carrying food to water to wash it has not been observed in the wild; it is seen mostly in captivity, when water is close by, and scientists see it as an inborn habit left over from that underwater foraging, not a way to clean food or make up for a lack of saliva. Raccoons are also famously clever. In a 1908 study, H. B. Davis found that they opened 11 of 13 complex locks in fewer than ten tries, and later studies showed that they can remember the solution to a task for at least three years.

Raccoons are mostly active at night, leaving their dens around dusk to forage and returning before dawn. Seeing one in daylight is not necessarily a sign of illness. Healthy raccoons, especially nursing mothers who need extra food, sometimes forage during the day, so a raccoon out in daylight is only a concern if it also moves strangely, seems confused, is aggressive or shows no fear. Dens can be almost anywhere: hollow trees, rock crevices, abandoned burrows of other animals, barns, attics, chimneys, crawl spaces and storm drains. In cities, the share of raccoons sleeping in buildings has ranged from 15 percent in Washington to 43 percent in Kassel, Germany. Raccoons do not hibernate. In the north they enter a winter rest, sleeping in their dens for days or weeks while snow lies on the ground and living off their autumn fat, then coming out on milder nights. Raccoons were long thought to be strictly solitary, but studies from the 1990s revealed a more complex society. Related females often share an area and meet at feeding or resting places, unrelated males form loose groups of usually up to four, and other males live alone. Home ranges vary from a few hectares in cities to dozens of square kilometers on the prairie.

Raccoons mate mainly from late January to mid March, earlier in the south and later in the north, and a female can conceive only during a window of three to four days. Pregnancy lasts 63 to 65 days, and in spring she gives birth to a litter of usually two to five kits, with an average that ranges from 2.5 in Alabama to 4.8 in North Dakota. A newborn raccoon is tiny and helpless: it weighs 60 to 75 grams, measures about 10 centimeters, and is born with its eyes and ear canals closed, although the mask and tail rings already show faintly in its fur. The ears open at 18 to 23 days and the eyes a few days later, so a three or four week old raccoon is just beginning to look around. At six to nine weeks the kits start eating solid food and following their mother out of the den, often in a line, and they are weaned by about 16 weeks. The mother raises them alone and teaches them where to find food through the summer. The family usually breaks up in autumn, though some young stay with their mother through their first winter. Young males may travel more than 20 kilometers to find a new home, while young females tend to settle near their mother.

Raccoons are one of the main carriers of rabies in North America. A variant of the virus adapted to raccoons spread from Florida in the 1950s and reached Virginia in the late 1970s, probably with raccoons moved for hunting, and from there it spread along the eastern United States. In 2006, raccoons accounted for 2,615 of the 6,940 rabies cases recorded in animals in the United States, about 38 percent. The first human death from the raccoon variant was recorded in 2003. Signs of a rabid raccoon include staggering, circling, paralysis, unusual aggression or tameness, and foaming at the mouth, but a raccoon out in daylight is not enough on its own to suspect rabies. Several US states drop oral vaccine baits from aircraft to stop its spread. Another risk is less known: about 60 percent of adult raccoons in their native range carry the raccoon roundworm, Baylisascaris procyonis, whose eggs pass in their droppings and can survive for years. In people, especially small children, swallowed eggs can cause severe brain damage, and bleach does not kill them. Distemper is the most common natural cause of death in raccoons but does not affect people. Raccoons can also carry leptospirosis, and mange can leave them with patchy, crusty fur. Sick or strange acting raccoons should be reported to local wildlife authorities.

Raccoons look cute, and baby raccoons raised by hand can be playful and affectionate, but experts strongly advise against keeping them as pets. Raccoons have never been domesticated: a raccoon raised in a house is still a wild animal, and as it matures, usually in its second year, it often becomes much harder to handle, biting, scratching and destroying furniture, cabinets and wiring with its clever hands. It needs a large space, a varied diet and constant stimulation, and few veterinarians treat it. Keeping raccoons is illegal in many places, including many US states, or allowed only with a special permit, and in Germany and Austria it is illegal to keep a single raccoon alone, and an outdoor enclosure is required. There are health risks too, from rabies to the raccoon roundworm. The history of pet raccoons also shows what happens when they are released. In Japan, the popularity of the 1977 anime Rascal the Raccoon led to imports of up to 1,500 raccoons a year; many owners could not cope and abandoned them, and today raccoons live wild in every prefecture. In Europe, escaped and released pets helped start populations in France, Spain and Italy. For these reasons the raccoon is now listed as an invasive species in the European Union, where keeping and trading new animals is restricted.

The IUCN lists the raccoon as Least Concern. Its latest assessment, made in 2015 and published in 2016, describes a population that is increasing and not fragmented, and the species lives in many protected areas. The main threats listed are road traffic and hunting and trapping, which do not endanger the species as a whole. Raccoons have long been hunted for their fur. In the United States, at least 388,000 were taken in the 1934 to 1935 season, and the harvest peaked at 5.2 million in 1976 to 1977, when the raccoon was one of the most valuable furbearers in North America; by the early 1990s it had fallen below a million as fur prices dropped. Where traffic and hunting are heavy, they can cause up to 90 percent of adult deaths. The raccoon's success has a darker side on islands. Raccoons were wiped out in Hispaniola, Cuba and Jamaica centuries ago, and the Barbados raccoon was last seen in 1964. The Cozumel raccoon, a separate species found only on that Mexican island, is Critically Endangered. At the same time, introduced raccoons threaten other animals: on Sandy Cay in the Bahamas, a single raccoon wiped out almost 69 percent of a population of rock iguanas, and in Europe and Japan they prey on amphibians, birds, crayfish and even hibernating bats.