Raccoon Facts

Raccoons are stout, medium-sized mammals, 16 to 28 inches in body with an 8-to-16-inch tail, weighing 8 to 20 pounds — sometimes over 30 for a well-fed urban animal fattening for winter. Their front paws have five long, dexterous toes that work without an opposable thumb. A large share of the brain's cortex processes touch from the paws, whose skin contains mechanoreceptors that become more sensitive underwater — one explanation for the "washing" behavior. A dense gray-brown-black coat, the black eye mask, and the ringed tail complete the look. Raccoons climb well and can descend a trunk headfirst by rotating the hind feet 180 degrees. They belong to the New World family Procyonidae with ringtails, coatis, and kinkajous.

The raccoon is native across much of North America, from southern Canada through the continental U.S. into Mexico and Central America. Twentieth-century introductions and fur-farm escapes also established populations in Europe, notably Germany, and Japan. Its natural habitats include temperate deciduous forest, hardwood swamp, and wetland marsh, where freshwater supports foraging and hollow trees, rock crevices, or burrows provide dens. Raccoons also live in cities and suburbs, denning in storm drains, attics, and chimneys while using foraging behaviors associated with their forest habitat.

Raccoons are opportunistic omnivores. In the wild the diet splits roughly into invertebrates, plants, and vertebrates: they feel through muddy shallows with their sensitive paws for crayfish, frogs, and small fish, and forage on land for fruit, berries, acorns, nuts, bird eggs, small rodents, and insects. Their tactile "washing" (dousing) isn't for hygiene — wetting food increases sensitivity in the paws, so they manipulate it underwater to gather texture and shape information before eating. In cities the diet includes human scraps, pet food, and crops, and their paws can open some latches and bin lids.

Raccoons are chiefly nocturnal, foraging from dusk and denning by sunrise. Long thought strictly solitary, they actually have a fluid social structure: related females share dens and ranges in a "fission-fusion" pattern, while unrelated males form loose coalitions of three or four that defend prime territory and mating access. They are highly intelligent and intensely curious, with excellent memories — recalling solutions to mechanical puzzles for years — and communicate with chitters, purrs, growls, hisses, and a bird-like trill mothers use with their young.

Mating runs from late January to mid-March, and the system is promiscuous — males mate with several females and play no part in raising young. The female finds a secure den, often a high tree cavity or a quiet attic, and after about 63 days' gestation bears 2 to 5 kits, born blind and helpless but already faintly masked. They nurse hidden in the den about eight weeks, then follow her on nocturnal foraging trips through the summer, learning survival and problem-solving, and stay together through their first winter before dispersing the next spring. Captive raccoons can reach 20 years, but predation, disease, starvation, and cars hold the wild average to just 2 to 3.

The raccoon is Least Concern with an increasing global trend — far from endangered, its numbers have exploded over the past century as it exploits human landscapes and loses its natural predators. In the wild coyotes, bobcats, cougars, and great horned owls take it, but the biggest threats are human: vehicle collisions kill huge numbers each year, and dense urban populations spread canine distemper and raccoon parvovirus, while the raccoon is a primary rabies vector in North America, prompting trapping and culling programs.

• National Geographic: Raccoon Facts
• IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: Procyon lotor
• University of Michigan Animal Diversity Web: Procyon lotor
• Humane Society of the United States: Raccoons