Gioca STEMAnimals

Animals · Woods and fields of North America

Raccoon

Procyon lotor

The animal that sees with its fingers

A raccoon feeling for food at the edge of a stream, the pose behind its reputation for washing.
A raccoon feeling for food at the edge of a stream, the pose behind its reputation for washing.
  • Status: Safe
  • Woods, marshes and towns across North America, from Canada to Panama

Numbers

Weight
20 lbfrom 11 to 57 lb across the species
Length
22 inbody only, from 16 to 28 in
Height
11 inat the shoulder, from 9 to 12 in
Lifespan
3 yearsin the wild; over 20 years in captivity
Brain given to touch
66 %of the sensory cortex
Memory
3 yearsfor a solved puzzle
Heaviest recorded
63 lb55 in in total length

Ten fun facts

  1. a raccoon can name an object by touch before its paw reaches it, using whiskers set above the claws.

  2. cold water does not dull its fingers: hours below fifty degrees leave its sense of touch unchanged.

  3. dunking food in a stream is not washing, but a way of feeling what the paws are holding.

  4. a raccoon still solves a puzzle three years after learning it, without practicing in between.

  5. its meals are roughly forty percent invertebrates, a third plants and the rest small animals.

  6. the front paws have no webbing between the fingers, which is why latches and lids are no trouble.

  7. in towns it raids garbage cans so reliably that people nicknamed it the trash panda.

  8. the smallest raccoons in the world live on islands off southern Florida and weigh only about four pounds.

  9. the heaviest wild raccoon ever weighed tipped the scale at sixty-three pounds, and measured almost five feet.

  10. its name in several Native American languages refers to one thing only: the way the animal uses its hands.

The quiz answers

The first one is the question printed in your book: here is the answer. The other four are extra.

Question 1 of 5★ this one is in your book

What is a raccoon's most important sense?

Question 2 of 5

Why does a raccoon dunk food in water?

Question 3 of 5

How long does a raccoon remember a solved puzzle?

Question 4 of 5

Where does a raccoon carry the whiskers it feels with?

Question 5 of 5

What does a raccoon eat?

Try it yourself

Experiment 1

Put five small objects in a bag and name each one by touch alone, without looking. A raccoon does this with whiskers above its claws.

Experiment 2

Hold an ice cube for thirty seconds and try to pick up a coin. A raccoon loses no feeling at all after hours in cold water.

Experiment 3

Set a simple latch on a box and open it once. Come back tomorrow: a raccoon would still remember it in three years.

Data from Wikidata (Q121439) and Wikipedia (Raccoon).