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If you’re lucky when you’re out in Canada, you may by chance get to meet some of Canada’s wildlife – I’m going to be posting a couple of facts about the animals you are likely to see there and about while you’re out – see if you can spot them all while you’re out there!

First up – The Raccoon!

The Raccoon is my favourite animal, and every year we go – they manage to amaze me with their intelligence, dexterity, agility and personality. We stay at a location where raccoons are very common, and we treat them now and then to a variety of different -raccoon safe- foods.

Rachael in the picture above accidentally got caught in a composter when she was only a kit (a baby raccoon) – though luckily she was found, and some water and food was put out for her. After this adventure, she grew to know the people we stay with and eventually had a litter of Kits of her own. The picture above was taken a week before she brought her kits out to look for food with them, rather than taking back food to them.

Raccoons are scientifically classed as Carnivores – but as everyone knows, raccoons are self fashioned omnivores, eating a whole variety of bugs, fruit, seeds, nuts, fish and even small rodents if they are hungry enough to hunt for them. Because of their varied diet it isn’t too difficult to find foods that may be suitable to offer to them – canned fish is usually a good option, as well as eggs.

Raccoons are Nocturnal, and will come out at night normally – but if a raccoon knows there’s food available, it puts its self above the law of the sun, and will come out to look for food when it’s hungry – like our friend at the floral clock!

Raccoons don’t generally have a particularly long life expectancy – on average just over three years. However this is an average.. Raccoons can live for up to 20 years depending on their environment.
In Canada it is illegal to hunt raccoons – they are a protected species, which instantly boosts the raccoons life expectancy in comparison to the unfortunate raccoons in the USA

If you’re lucky enough to get close enough to a raccoon to watch it eat or go about its nightly tasks, watch how it uses its Hands.. raccoons have often been mistaken for having opposable thumbs, as they can seemingly use their hands in exactly the same way as humans – being able to pick up and manipulate objects easily – and looking at their hands you could easily be mistaken for thinking those cute fingers were very similar to human hands.

Raccoons are known for their sneakiness and intelligence.. If you have a chicken coop, always check the floor… raccoons have been known to slowly and carefully claw at the wooden boards underneath, and the most secure hen coop in the world cant stop the tunneling thief on one night when he pops up out of the floor – Literally grabs a chicken with his hands and scampers back off down his tunnel, only to return for more on the same night, hoarding food!… Another example of raccoons and their intelligence is their ability to problem solve. In some parts it is legal to have raccoons as pets, and you can buy toys for them. These special toys are a number of little boxes all locked by some form of mechanism – the locks go from simple bolts right through to twisted wires – inside the box the raccoon knows there is food, and will work out how to open the box and get at the food! ..
Raccoons have also been known to learn which symbols mean more food — experiments were done to find out if a raccoon would go to a box with more raisens in if they were given the option after they had previously found this out — surely enough – the raccoons always went to the box with the most food simply by the recognition.
Melon farmers often find melons with holes clawed into them, allowing the raccoon to get its hand in, and claw out the sweet fruit inside – leaving nothing but a shell full of seeds!

The raccoon has an incredible sense of touch. If you notice, raccoons often are pawing at the grass, food, or other objects – when a domesticated raccoon is being handled, it will always be sniffing and reaching its paws into every place imaginable – especially finding out what is inside pockets and bags! This habit of exploration by touch has lead to how it got its name in many different languages – in German – Waschbar – “washing bear” in french raton laveaur (excuse my spelling) “washing rat” – Raccoons also do dip things in water to appear to wash them, but the actions of touch are one of the key reasons for them doing this!

Even though they are highly intelligent, just like you and me not every raccoon likes to be touched, so it’s best to let them do their thing!

Popular raccoons you may know… Meeko – out of Disney’s Pocahontas and the Canadian 80s cartoon – The Raccoons, featuring Bert, Ralph and Melissa!

So there you have it – Now if you cross paths with one while you’re on holiday, you’ll have a little bit more understanding of their magic!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Canadian Wildlife, Ontario. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.