Animal Intrigue: Raccoon, Procycon lotor

Some trees are anachronistic - meaning that scientists believe they have lost the species that co-evolved as their seed disperser. Avocados are the first to come to mind. The American persimmon tree, Diospyros virginiana, is another example - scientists found that after passing through an elephant, persimmon seeds increased germination success and sprouted faster.

Photo credit: Gregory Thompson

Luckily, we still have raccoons, procycon lotor, which are able to eat and pass persimmon seeds with successful germination, who are keeping this lovely native fruit in the ecosystem. While white tailed deer love to eat persimmons, they are not effective dispersers. So the deer, oppossum, foxes and birds can all thank the common raccoon for propogating this excellent food source.

Persimmon fruit.

Photo credit: Koshy Koshy (link)

This past week, I went to the lovely Huntley Meadows in Alexandria for the first time. It is a gorgeous wetland with extensive boardwalk trails. There are frogs, turtles, snakes, herons, wood ducks, wild turkeys and, perhaps most charming - raccoons, eating persimmons.

Video credit: Gregory Thompson

Raccoons hands evolved to help them find food buried in the mud on the banks of rivers and lakes in South America. Their paws are extremely sensitive, with 4-5x more mechanoreceptor cells (cells that help them detect mechanical signals such as change in pressure) than found in most other mammals. Humans and primates have similar numbers of these cells. Some animals prioritize certain senses - for example, in owls their hearing is their dominant sense. For raccoons, 75% of their brain's sensory processing power is devoted to touch, more than any other animal studied. As omnivores, this evolved to help them find and identify many different types of food.

Despite their scientific name (lotor means to wash), it is actually a myth that raccoons wash their food. What they are actually doing are feeling their food to identify it, but because they so often hunt at the edge of the water, it can appear to us that they are washing or softening their food. There is evidence that water improves the tactile nerve response in their paws - so what looks like washing is actually the raccoons trying to "see" (feel) their food better.

Their hands also make them excellent climbers, scaling trees and navigating branches with ease. They even have a unique ability, when descending trees headfirst, they are able to rotate their hind feet a full 180 degrees, so they are pointing behind them, to aid in their descent.

Photo credit: Tina Dudley

There are three species of raccoon, all of which look fairly similar to each other, however the pygmy raccoon in Mexico is critically endangered. The common raccoon, procycon lotor, is of least concern, with a population that has exploded since the 1940s. Their closest living relatives are the ringtail, coati, and olingo - other species of the family procyonidae. The divergence of raccoons and ringtails is thought to have occurred about 10.2 million years ago.

Raccoons typically have 1-7 young, called kits. The Wildlife Rescue League describes the early life of a young raccoon as follows:

When hungry, cold, or not in contact with another warm body, the cubs will start chattering, whine or twitter like birds. They can crawl in a spider-like fashion with all four legs in extension, but cannot climb or stand and support their full weight. The eyes open at about 21 days, the ears shortly thereafter. They will be very vocal at this age. They will churr, growl, hiss, and give an alarm snort. When five to six weeks old, most can walk, run, and climb very well. Seven-week-old cubs will engage in active (and sometimes rough) fighting characterized by growling, squealing, biting, wrestling, and imitating adult defense postures. After about eight to nine weeks of age they begin eating solid foods in the wild and begin traveling with their mother.

Photo credit: Pixabay, user pacificairforce (link)

Too often we think of the wildlife that lives near us as pests, and romanticize wildlife that lives elsewhere. When you go to the zoo, you rarely see or learn about native species, or how you can support wildlife by cultivating native plants in your yard. The next time you have raccoons in your attic or in your garbage, take a moment to be impressed by how successfully this animal has adapted to the human environment. And if you need a reminder of how lovely this animal is, stop by Huntley Meadows in August or September and join the herd of photographers capturing this charismatic critter.