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Baby Raccoons

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I gained "possession" of two infant male raccoons after their mother had moved them down from their nest in the tree, and never returned. At first they were so terrified they almost vibrated, but after a couple of days they became like human babies. They had their canine teeth, but no teeth in the front. I knew nothing about raccoons and assumed their progression to adulthood would be like puppies and kittens. If these babies were puppies or kittens, I would have assumed they were about four to six weeks old. I thought they could eat, and when I got them a baby bottle they rejected it because it bore no familiarity to Mom. I would give them bowls of cereal with milk, the soggy mix helped them suck up the milk with ease. As they grew, I found out their love of eggs and hamburger. I gave them raw hamburger and watched them roll it into balls much like a small child would with a ball of clay. They would work it between their hands, and they roll it on the floor until they formed perfect balls, but I don't think they ate it, but just used them as toys. Always trying to be fancy, I had a silver casserole dish that the Malamute and cats used as a water dish. One day I found Biffy, the perfect-looking raccoon laying on his back in the dish looking like some hefty man on a raft in a swimming pool. These two brothers had completely opposite personalities, Biffy looking like a painting of a perfect raccoon, yet he was timid to the point of hostility, yet Boofy, who looked more like a possum, was the so amicable, he was the clown of the house. One day, exasperated by trying to please Biffy, I opened a can on chicken noodle soup and he grabbed up a handful of noodles with his left hand, and then reached behind with his right and opened a kitchen cabinet door whereupon he knocked over a box of oatmeal and rubbed the whole mess together and then proceeded to poo on it. They kept us up all night wanting to play, and I remember one horrid night lying on a bare mattress with the ceiling light on tossing ice cubes onto the floor so the babies could have toys. I took them outside to try to teach them to climb trees and was met by real anger for such an audacious act, and I was exhausted. One night we put them outside only for me to wake up in the morning with the sweet Boofy laying in bed next to me and Biffy high up on a closet shelve. I was so mad, that I rose up to reprimand Boofy, but he yawned and put his hand over his mouth like a human. That killed the anger. I would take them to visit my Mother and Biffy would make a bee line over to her under- the- sink cabinet where she kept a small trash can. He would rip the door open and tear through the trash like a monster. My mother yelled to make him stop and when I went into the kitchen to tell Biffy off, he sat down and raised his hands in the air for me to pick him up like a baby. No, I could not stay mad at these human-like animals. They had me good. But due to a family tragedy, the loss of my eldest son, I could no longer care for them as they were now at the stage of true wild grade school children so my husband and younger son let them loose at a wonderful forest preserve, and they did not want to be left there, but they were. Months later I was at a book fair with my eight year old son and we came across a book that said baby raccoons stayed with their mothers for at least a year. Although the grief of losing my son was as fresh as the day it happened, my sorrow went to Biffy and Boofy, now alone on their own probably not able to care for themselves. I always would imagine they would hook up with another family of raccoons, but in the back of my mind, I think I may have killed them. If you take in a baby animal make sure you do a thorough research on it's needs, at the time and in the future. This happened before we had a computer and it was the eighties, and the computers at that time would have no internet, so we did the best we could and if I had not lost my first born son, my hero, we would have kept them and I would have done my best to teach them how to be independent. The son I lost loved the raccoons and they would sleep in his room with him when they were tiny and slept more, and one morning I walked into his room and one was snoozing on his chest while the other was sucking on his earlobe. My husband rescued a young raccoon from a large dog years later, but this raccoon was a child but had been around long enough to fear, or more aptly put, hate people. We put him in an unfinished large room, where he clawed the dry wall and we wanted to let him go but we could get nowhere close to him as we could a werewolf. We opened the window and put a ladder outside and built a platform in the tree next to the window. We went outside as he was coming down the ladder and he ran back in, but later he did leave and move right into the tree where we were able to keep him supplied with food and water. Now he was a child raccoon, and one night we saw a police car pull up to our neighbors house and we went out to see what was happening as he lived alone with his fox terrier. He told us this giant raccoon had scared his dog so he called the police to have it taken away, and our local force had a habit of shooting raccoons on the spot. We followed towards the ravine as the policeman tracked down this giant pirate, only to see "Ricky's" little face peering from a pile of brush. We were terrified the police would do something and were to afraid to say we had kept him, which is against the law, but the policeman said," he's only a baby and is too small to hurt your dog, so Ricky was saved. That's the last we saw of him.
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Procyon (genus)

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Cozumel raccoon (P. pygmaeus)

Procyon is a genus of nocturnal mammals comprising three species commonly known as raccoons in the family Procyonidae. The most familiar species, the common raccoon (P. lotor), is often known simply as "the" raccoon, as the two other raccoon species in the genus are native only to the tropics and less well known. Genetic studies have shown that the closest relatives of raccoons are the ring-tailed cats and cacomistles of genus Bassariscus,[2][3][4] from which they diverged about 10 million years ago.[4]

General attributes

Raccoons are unusual, for their thumbs (though not opposable) enable them to open many closed containers (such as garbage cans and doors). They are omnivores with a reputation for being clever and mischievous; their intelligence and dexterity equip them to survive in a wide range of environments and are one of the few medium-to-large-sized animals that have enlarged their range since human encroachment began (another is the coyote). Raccoon hindfeet are plantigrade similar to those of humans and bears. Raccoons are sometimes considered vermin or a nuisance. They have readily adapted to urban environments (compare urban opossums, skunks and foxes), scavenging garbage bins and other food sources.

Although there is some variation depending on species, raccoons range from 20–40 inches (51–102 cm) in length (including the tail) and weigh between 10 and 35 lb (4.5 and 15.9 kg). The raccoon's tail ranges from 8 to 16 inches (20 to 41 cm) in length. Male raccoons are generally larger than females. A baby raccoon is called a kit.[5]

Raccoons can live up to 16 years in the wild, though most do not make it through their second year. A raccoon that survives past its youth will live an average of five years. Primary causes of mortality include humans (hunting, trapping, cars) and malnutrition.[6]

Species

There are three extant species of raccoon:

Some raccoons once considered as separate species are now thought to be the same as or subspecies of the common raccoon, including the Barbados raccoon (P. gloveralleni), Nassau raccoon (P. maynardi), Guadeloupe raccoon (P. minor), and Tres Marias raccoon (P. insularis) (Helgen and Wilson 2005). Procyon brachyurus Wiegmann, 1837 was described from captive specimens; its identity is undeterminable as the remains of the two animals assigned to this taxon cannot be located and may have been lost.

Raccoon skull (left) and Cozumel raccoon skull (right)

Nomenclature

The word "raccoon" is derived from the Algonquian word aroughcoune, "he who scratches with his hands". Spanish-speaking colonists similarly adopted their term, mapache, from mapachtli the Nahuatl word for the animal, meaning roughly "that which has hands".

The genus name, Procyon, comes from the Greek for "before the dog"; this term is also used for the star Procyon of the constellation Canis Minor.

Raccoons are today understood to have a relatively loose evolutionary relationship with bears, which was nonetheless seen as significant by the early taxonomists; Carl Linnaeus initially placed the raccoon in the genus Ursus. In many languages, the raccoon is named for its characteristic dousing behavior in conjunction with that language's term for "bear": Waschbär in German, mosómedve in Hungarian, vaskebjørn in Danish and Norwegian, tvättbjörn in Swedish, wasbeer in Dutch, pesukaru in Estonian and pesukarhu in Finnish, araiguma (アライグマ) in Japanese, orsetto lavatore in Italian, huànxióng (浣熊) in Chinese and mieshta mechka (миеща мечка) in Bulgarian all mean "washing bear". One exception is Russian, where raccoon is named yenot (енот) due to similarity between raccoon and genet furs. However, the full name of the common raccoon in Russian is also water-related: it is called yenot-poloskun (енот-полоскун), which means "rinsing raccoon".

In some cases, the "washing" descriptor is applied only to the common raccoon species: for example, in French the common raccoon is called raton laveur or "washing rat", while its Linnaean binomial is Procyon lotor or, roughly, "washing pre-dog". In contrast, the crab-eating raccoon is "little crab-catching rat" (raton crabier) and "crab-eating pre-dog" (Procyon cancrivorus) in French and Latin, respectively.

Literature

See also

References

  1. ^ Kurtén, Björn; and Anderson, Elaine (1980) Pleistocene Mammals of North America Columbia University Press, New York ISBN 0-231-03733-3
  2. ^ K.-P. Koepfli; M. E. Gompper; E. Eizirik; C.-C. Ho; L. Linden; J. E. Maldonado; R. K. Wayne (2007). "Phylogeny of the Procyonidae (Mammalia: Carvnivora): Molecules, morphology and the Great American Interchange". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 43 (3): 1076–1095. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2006.10.003. PMID 17174109.
  3. ^ Eizirik, E.; Murphy, W. J.; Koepfli, K.-P.; Johnson, W. E.; Dragoo, J. W.; Wayne, R. K.; O'Brien, S. J. (2010-02-04). "Pattern and timing of diversification of the mammalian order Carnivora inferred from multiple nuclear gene sequences". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 56 (1): 49–63. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2010.01.033. PMC 7034395. PMID 20138220.
  4. ^ a b c Helgen, K. M.; Pinto, M.; Kays, R.; Helgen, L.; Tsuchiya, M.; Quinn, A.; Wilson, D.; Maldonado, J. (2013-08-15). "Taxonomic revision of the olingos (Bassaricyon), with description of a new species, the Olinguito". ZooKeys (324): 1–83. doi:10.3897/zookeys.324.5827. PMC 3760134. PMID 24003317.
  5. ^ Raccoon facts
  6. ^ ADW: Procyon lotor: Information

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Procyon (genus): Brief Summary

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Cozumel raccoon (P. pygmaeus)

Procyon is a genus of nocturnal mammals comprising three species commonly known as raccoons in the family Procyonidae. The most familiar species, the common raccoon (P. lotor), is often known simply as "the" raccoon, as the two other raccoon species in the genus are native only to the tropics and less well known. Genetic studies have shown that the closest relatives of raccoons are the ring-tailed cats and cacomistles of genus Bassariscus, from which they diverged about 10 million years ago.

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