Raccoon Dog

MammalEast Asia

17 Sept

Written By Alexander Julius Jensen

Nyctereutes procyonoides / viverrinus

A raccoon or dog?

A taxonomist’s black box.

A kin to the fox.

Raccoon or Dog?

A union between a dog and a raccoon might produce something like this creature. It stands on all fours — very dog-like — with short legs and padded paws. Its tail is thick and furry, like a big feather duster. It has a pointy snout and a set of short, rounded ears, and — like a raccoon — it wears a bandit mask of black fur around its eyes. So what is it?

It's no interspecies lovechild. The dog family (Canidae) and raccoon family (Procyonidae) are both carnivoran mammals, but their paths diverged millions of years ago — which is to say, a mating between the two, much less an offspring, is very unlikely.

No, the raccoon dog falls firmly into the dog camp, the Canidae family. And its bushy tail? It hints at its closest relatives: foxes.¹ But in many ways, this enigmatic canid is quite singular. Set apart from raccoons, dogs, or foxes.¹

Skillful Scavenger

A wild raccoon dog combines the self-sufficiency of a fox with the adaptability and tenacity of a raccoon. It lives from the subarctic to the subtropics, from deep forests to urban parks. Its diet is broad and its relationships are flexible. It's a creature of the night and the day, and a denizen of the border realms, of dusk and dawn.

The raccoon dog is a scavenger and collector, an opportunistic omnivore. It trots unhurriedly along the forest floor, sweeping its nose back and forth to pick up palatable scents. For a canid, its vision is somewhat poor, but with a keen nose and persistent nature, the raccoon dog is an ace forager. It also enjoys aquatic hunting, using its paws to scoop amphibians from rivers and lakes or crabs from tide pools. Alternatively, it has no problem taking a dip, taking a dive, to obtain some deeper-dwelling seafood.

The dental structure of a mammal often says a lot about its eating habits. While the raccoon dog's meat-shearing carnassials are reduced in size, its crushing-and-grinding molars are relatively large, reflecting the large amount of plant material in its diet. It'll eat fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, leaves, stems, and roots.

Smelly Sociability

How do we know so much about the raccoon dog's diet? Partly through direct observations, yes, but secretive as the raccoon dog is, we can only observe so much. Mostly, we've learned so much about this canid's food preferences because of its predilection for social defecation.

Communal latrines, more properly called 'communal marking sites', are the smelly notice boards of the animal world; where a community of badgers or lemurs or tapirs can make a "post" (a poop), providing others of their species with information on their diet, health, sex, reproductive availability, etc. A communal latrine can bring animals together, for mating, for example, or keep them apart, avoiding unnecessary aggression between two individuals or groups.

Many species enjoy examining the excrement of their neighbours. A meerkat family has an exclusive latrine only used by family members —like a family group chat — but they also make several, smaller latrines encircling their territory to indirectly converse with other meerkat families. Groups of moles and hyraxes emerge from their subterranean homes when nature calls, creating dunghills that serve as pungent territorial markers. And some solitary species, such as ocelots, use communal latrines like a dating app, with a male advertising his presence and a female her receptiveness, allowing two typically reclusive animals to meet and mate.

Raccoons are also known to use communal latrines, but very few dogs do. So in this regard, the raccoon dog is more raccoon than dog. Its latrine is often located in an open area or along a little-used trail (no one wants a latrine on their regular commute). Information, both visual and olfactory, is exchanged via faeces and urine, both between family members and between strangers. Details obtained from a latrine can shape the impression one raccoon dog has of another, and as a result, if or when they meet face-to-face, they'll behave differently depending on whether or not they've previously become olfactorily acquainted. These conspicuous crap sites are, ultimately, how we have such detailed knowledge of the raccoon dog's diet.

Cosy Coats & Winter Weight Gain

The raccoon dog doesn't make for a big canine — about as large as a beagle, but a lot furrier. Its pelage is a blend of muted shades, from whites to tans, to light yellows and yellow-browns, and garments of black: a black mask on its face, black stockings on its legs, and a black-tipped tail, like a brush dipped in ink. Depending on where it’s from, a raccoon dog’s coat may be lighter or darker, bushier or more trim, boldly patterned or quite plain. There even exists a rare, pure white variant.

Like its coat, the raccoon dog’s weight is a wildly fluctuating trait — both between populations and, over the course of a year, within a single individual. Both traits reflect the demands of the environment. In winter, the coldest parts of this canid's range can drop as low as -45 °C (-49 °F), accompanied by frigid winds, layers of snow, and scant food. At best, it's an unproductive time to be active. At worst, one misstep could mean a hungry, hypothermic end. Many animals avoid the risk entirely by going into standby mode — also known as hibernation. From bears, bats, and bumblebees, to skunks, squirrels, and snakes, to fat-tailed lemurs and wood frogs, the survival strategy of hibernation (or in the case of cold-blooded species, a similar state called brumation) is widespread across the animal kingdom.² But, out of the 35 or so canid species, none hibernate. None except the raccoon dog.

Before a raccoon dog can settle in for the winter, it must first build up the proper physique. That calls for eating, and eating, and more eating. A raccoon dog can put on 50% of its body weight prior to hibernation, going from 4 to 6 kilograms (9–14 lbs) in summer to a chunky 6 to 10 kg (13–22 lbs) as winter approaches. The raccoon dog climbs into its underground den, often with its partner, and settles down snugly, insulated by a layer of fat and a thick, cosy coat.

But the raccoon dog's soft, dense fur is both a blessing and a curse. It protects it from the cold of freezing winters — but also draws the jealous gaze of hairless apes, greedy for luscious pelts.

A Legacy of Suffering

The raccoon dog’s native range stretches from eastern Siberia through northern China, North Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. But don’t be surprised if you spot one in Europe. From France to Finland, Romania to western Russia, these odd canids now roam the mosaic forests and rural countryside, slipping into fields, gardens, and even suburbs. They are the descendants of unwanted stock and fur farm escapees.

Humans have long coveted the soft fur of other animals — perhaps ever since we lost most of our own — and we still do today. Some are willing to pay over $4,000 for a sweater made of vicuña fur, woven from the luxurious wool of an Andean camelid. But that's an extreme example — and, compared to other fur-farming operations, an exceptionally ethical one. From the United States to Europe to Asia, the global fur trade is worth around $22 billion, with the largest producers including Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, and China.

Behind the walls of mass-scale fur farms, there are minks crammed into stacks of battery cages, foxes with infections and missing limbs, and raccoon dogs killed via gassing or head-to-tail electrocutions. It's estimated that 95% of fur comes from animals who've suffered in such horrific conditions. That adds up to a lot of tortured lives: in 2018, fur farms in the EU alone bred 34.7 million mink, 2.7 million foxes, 227,000 chinchillas, and 166,000 raccoon dogs. All are destined for a cruel and short life, only to line the coats and drape the shoulders of people. For all intents and purposes, these minks and foxes and raccoon dogs aren't seen as animals anymore, or really living beings at all, but products. And, when a product is no longer profitable, you dump it. It's only good business.

Between the years 1927 and 1957, the fur-farming industry introduced some 4,000 to 9,000 raccoon dogs into the wilds of the former Soviet Union. Today, the raccoon dog inhabits as many as 33 different countries across Europe. If, at some point in the future, we ever find the compassion to put an end to industrial fur farming, when that last fur farm is shut down, the raccoon dogs will still be there, in our forests and gardens — reminders of our past indifference, the enduring legacy of human greed and cruelty.

Tanuki

Far to the east, in its native Japanese range, the raccoon dog goes by a different name: tanuki.

Perhaps the tanuki is better known as a mythical figure, a yōkai, rather than a real animal. The folkloric tanuki is a shapeshifting trickster who delights in mischief. But it's also jovial, and often portrayed as humorous and bumbling — getting itself stuck in the form of a teapot in one fairytale, for instance. In its non-teapot form, it appears as an anthropomorphised version of the raccoon dog, wearing a straw hat, boasting a pot belly, and often displaying its oversized scrotum. A large sack seems an odd trait to give a folkloric creature, but the tanuki's giant testicles are an integral part of its character. There's even a famous nursery rhyme about them:

Tan tan tanuki no kintama wa / Kaze mo nai no ni / Bura bura

Tan-tan-tanuki’s balls / Even when there is no wind / They swing, swing

The tanuki's balls aren't just large, they're also magical. The yōkai can turn them into various objects, from weapons to instruments to an umbrella, or use them as part of its shapeshifting disguise: the tanuki takes on the appearance of a shopkeeper while its balls become the shop itself. If you visit Japan, you'll see statues of tanuki in many shops and homes, or standing outside restaurants beckoning patrons to enter, with a notebook for recording transactions in one paw and a bottle of sake — the tanuki is a notorious drinker — in the other.³

The tanuki is a yōkai of the forests and mountains, just like its real-world counterpart. Nyctereutes viverrinus, or the Japanese raccoon dog, ranges from the snowy north of Hokkaido to the subtropical south of Kyushu and some of its outlying isles. It looks much like its mainland relatives but with shorter, less insulating fur and — the pot-bellied tanuki notwithstanding — a smaller stomach. But just as the mythical tanuki has come into the city and the home in the form of artwork and statues, as part of pop culture,⁴ the Japanese raccoon dog has entered the ever-expanding human domain; both of its own free will and against it, both alive and not.

At the centre of Tokyo stands the Imperial Palace. It is a complex of park grounds and ponds, of temples and fortresses, defended by vast walls of piled stone and encircled by wide moats. It is the official residence of the Japanese imperial family. It's also the home of a few tenacious raccoon dogs. Up until the 1950s, there were records of raccoon dogs within the Tokyo metropolitan area, but the 1970s brought rapid urbanisation to western Tokyo, and the raccoon dog population greatly declined. But they didn't disappear.

Beginning in the mid-1990s, guards at the Imperial Palace reported sightings of raccoon dog intruders within the palace grounds. Biological surveys between 1996 and 2000 confirmed their presence, and more recent studies revealed that several raccoon dogs now live exclusively within the Imperial Palace, having claimed that royal land as their own territory.

Like the crafty, North American creatures these canids imitate, raccoon dogs are very adaptable; they're opportunistic scavengers that aren't finicky about their food and are more tolerant of humans than most animals. The majority of raccoon dog sightings occur in the suburbs around major cities, like Osaka, Sendai, and especially Tokyo. These suburbanite raccoon dogs have taken up residence in the borderlands, living between the forested mountain wilds and the concrete jungles of the cities. Others still roam the wild forests of deciduous and evergreen trees and hunt the coastlines for fish. And some — an increasing amount — scavenge in urban parks and slink down dark alleyways, like half-ghosts, or yōkai, living in our cities, alongside us but also apart.

Humans & Raccoon Dogs

Humanity has long struggled to be a cordial neighbour; to others of our own kind, certainly, but especially other species. When opposing interests meet, humanity often wins through with brute force — with axes and bulldozers, guns and poisons — and a single-minded belief in our own superiority. If another species dares to intrude on what we've decided is our own space, or interferes with our livelihoods, that interloper is swiftly labelled as a pest, no longer a living creature but a thing to be gotten rid of.

Raccoon dogs have long been hunted within their natural range. Their bones have been used in traditional medicine as an aphrodisiac. In Japan, raccoon dog meat was consumed by people (though rarely is today), and their fur was sought after for making calligraphy brush tips. Living on the boundaries of the human world, and often active in times of low light, thousands of raccoon dogs also perish as roadkill every year. But raccoon dogs today are primarily hunted because they're considered pests — intruders on our farms and fields, thieves of our hard-earned crops. The legal culling of raccoon dogs in Japan peaked in 1981, with some 76,000 dogs “harvested” that year alone. That number has since dropped to “only” 15,176 animals in 2012.

In Europe, where the raccoon dog is considered an invasive species, people are even less likely to show sympathy. In Poland, during the early 1990s, some 450–600 raccoon dogs were hunted annually; in 2011, it was over 11,000. Germany saw 30,000 raccoon dogs dead in the hunting season of 2008/2009, and, in 2013, Finland culled some 160,000.

The issue of invasive species is a complicated one. The need to keep ecosystems intact and native species safe can often conflict with our ethics — the murder of hundreds of thousands of animals, whether those animals are considered invasive pests or not, still feels wrong. Obviously, it would have been best had the animals never invaded in the first place, had never been introduced to foreign ecosystems by people. But they have been, and now it’s about weighing up the consequences of acting versus not acting: which would lead to the greatest harm?

Yes, mass culling is unquestionably horrible, but what would the consequences be for the native wildlife and the ecosystems they inhabit if invasive species were given free rein? Would it lead to an ecosystem collapse and countless extinctions, or could the invasive species integrate themselves with little permanent damage? Again, these are very complicated questions to answer — given the complex web of relationships in an ecosystem and the cascades of changes that a single variable can cause — but these are the kinds of questions that must be investigated and deeply considered when managing invasive species. Unlike the raccoon dog, the topic is far from black and white.

When confronted with certain invasive animals, as horrible as it is, culling may be the best course of action. Other practices are less morally defensible — those done purely for our own gratification. One such practice, which we've already discussed, is the rearing of animals to be slaughtered for their fur. Raccoon dogs aren’t the most numerous animals on fur farms, but they still number in the millions. In Finland, they're still quite common today, but less so than 20 or 30 years ago. Some countries have done away completely with farming these canids. Neither Sweden nor Hungary have had raccoon dogs on their farms since 1995. Meanwhile, the largest producer of raccoon dog fur in the world, China, was estimated to hold some 15 million raccoon dogs on fur farms across the country. A 2015 investigation looking into fur farms in northern China uncovered raccoon dogs in filthy cages barely larger than their own bodies, cages with several animals crammed inside, evidence of injury and electrocution, and dead raccoon dogs being used as feed for the living.

The loss of life as a result of the fur farming industry is immense, but it gets worse when you pursue the history further. You already know that fur farming is responsible for the presence of raccoon dogs in Europe, but they’re far from the only animals unwillingly turned into invasives by the industry.

Arriving in Europe in the 1920s, this time from the west instead of the east, American minks were imported to be bred en masse for their fur. They now run wild across the continent, devouring native mammals and birds. They've since been introduced to much of Asia and southern South America, too. Speaking of South America, we introduced an invasive species only to steal a native one: exporting the coypu — a large aquatic rodent with a dense undercoat of fur — which is now invasive to the waterways of the United States, Europe, and Asia. The story is much the same for the muskrat — another aquatic rodent, this time from North America — brought to the Old World.

These animals would probably never have become invasive if it weren't for the fur industry. Some of them, like the raccoon dog and especially the mink, prey on native species, and many of them are now managed through yearly cullings. If you add those deaths to the millions killed annually on the operating farms, the amount of suffering and death produced by the fur industry is too great to imagine and very difficult, I would say impossible, to justify.

The consequences of such enterprises extend beyond the animals themselves. Close human-animal interactions always pose some risk of introducing a pioneering strain of some disease from one species to another. Some of the worst illnesses that have plagued mankind — including the plague — are so-called zoonotic diseases. Other examples of zoonoses are rabies, malaria, Ebola, anthrax, and the coronaviruses, including the most recent, pandemic-causing variety.

Often, these make the jump from domesticated animals, since those are the animals humans interact with most often. But put wild animals into cramped, unsanitary conditions, alongside large crowds of tightly packed humans — someplace like a wet market — and you create the perfect conditions for a wild-animal disease to make its way into a human host. The perfect conditions for evolving a new zoonotic disease.

The discovery that raccoon dogs, a species known to carry COVID-19, were sold at the wet market in Wuhan, China — where the outbreak was first identified — sparked speculation that this species could have played the role of vector. But raccoon dogs weren’t the only wild animals caged and put up for sale: there were also masked palm civets, Malayan porcupines, and Himalayan marmots, among others. Swab samples taken from the emptied cages revealed the extent of the exotic menagerie sold there, as well as viral RNA of SARS-CoV-2 — the strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

There’s not enough evidence to pin the blame on any single species (and likely never will be), or even to rule out that the viral samples all came from infected humans, though that would be extremely unlikely. Regardless of whether this particular market sparked the pandemic, the takeaway is clear: cramming hundreds of ill-treated, unhealthy animals — many with the potential to carry zoonotic diseases — into a closed space in the middle of a major city is a bad idea.

The same goes for keeping wild animals in the home. Which is to say, for the sake of both owner and animal — no matter how charismatic it is — never get a raccoon dog as a pet.⁴

Firstly, keeping one as a pet might be against the law, as it is in the UK and the entire United States, for instance. Secondly, despite somewhat resembling a domestic pooch, the raccoon dog still very much has the habits of a wild animal. It's accustomed to roaming across an average territory of 3.4 kilometres² (2.1 mi²), with some territories spanning 20 km² (12.4 mi²) — a little larger than your average living room or backyard. It also needs a complex environment, with a place to hide, plenty of vegetation, and water. And, a final but important point: this is an animal that primarily communicates through scent. It stinks, a lot. An owner wouldn’t enjoy the kind of “message” their pet raccoon dog would leave for them.

The raccoon dog is a singular creature with a long and complicated history with the human race.

It has been part of our culture for centuries, long portrayed as a mischievous but good-natured trickster, and more recently adored as a mascot and pop-culture character in video games and on the internet. But much of our relationship with the actual animal has been exploitative. Hunted in the wilds for meat and fur; captured, bred, and housed in cruel conditions on fur farms; then, finally escaping from our clutches, only to be culled as an invasive pest. Perhaps the tanuki, that light-hearted trickster, has reason to play far more hostile tricks on human beings. And maybe we need to rethink our relationship with the raccoon dog, and the many other animals who suffer, caught between us and our wants.

¹ Several groups within the canid family are called foxes. The raccoon dog is most closely related to the “true foxes” in the genus Vulpes — which includes such members as the red fox, Arctic fox, and fennec fox. Alternatively, some sources claim a closer relationship with the bat-eared fox (Otocyon megalotis) from Africa.

² Only “warm-blooded” animals hibernate — that is, those animals that maintain a constant body temperature separate from the environment — and among these endotherms, hibernation is pretty much an exclusively mammalian practice (although the common poorwill, a nightjar from North America, appears to be a unique avian hibernator). Hibernation entails a long period of inactivity in which body temperature and metabolism are lowered, and heartbeat and breathing are slowed to conserve energy.

When a “cold-blooded” animal, such as an amphibian or reptile — that depends on outside sources to regulate its body temperature — goes dormant for the winter, it's known as brumation. Like hibernation, brumation means an extended period of inactivity, but a brumating reptile wakes more often and randomly than a hibernating mammal; typically doing so on warmer days, and often to drink some water before dozing off again. For the ectotherms, the “cold-blooded” animals with naturally lower metabolisms, going without food for months is less of a challenge than it is for a mammal or bird.

³ Tanuki have long been a part of Japanese culture in their yōkai form — populating stories, artwork, and streets and homes in statue form, but they've also more recently made a jump into global pop culture. They play a central role in one of Studio Ghibli’s lesser-known films, 1994's Pom Poko, in which they use their supernatural abilities to try to save their forest home from urban development. They appear, in a fashion, as the Tanooki Suit in several Mario games and the newest Mario Movie. And perhaps most famously, the Animal Crossing debt collector, Tom Nook, is a tanuki.

⁴ Even zoos, with years of research on behaviour and welfare, staffed by wildlife professionals, rarely keep captive raccoon dogs. Only two accredited zoos in the U.S. keep raccoon dogs — those being the Atlanta Zoo and the Oklahoma City Zoo. In the UK, Ponderosa Zoo has two raccoon dogs. In most Japanese zoos, you’ll be hard-pressed to find any tanuki.

Size // Small
Length // 55 - 71 cm (22 - 28 in)
Weight // 6.5 kg - 10 kg (14 - 22 lb)
Activity: Diurnal ☀️
Lifestyle: Social 👥
Lifespan: Up to 14 years in captivity
Diet: Herbivore
Favourite Food: Tubers 🍠
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Family: Suidae
Genus: Porcula
Species: P. salvania

The pygmy hog is about the size of a chunky house cat, weighing between 6.5 kg (14 lb) and 10 kg (22 lb) — quite chunky indeed. Still, that's 10 times lighter than an adult wild boar. It’s also shaped like an eggplant with legs, with little evident delineation between its head, neck, and body.
The pygmy hog is a resident of the grasslands in Assam, India, where the grasses can grow up to 8 metres (26 ft) tall.
It lives in family groups of four to six — usually one or more adult females with their piglets (or hoglets) — and together they forage for roots and tubers, retiring every night to a “bed”: a dug-out depression in the ground, piled high with dry grasses.
As a new year rolls around, males will join a group and mate with the females. The resulting hoglets are born weighing just 150 to 200 grams (5 – 7 oz), developing reddish stripes across their bodies after about a week, helping them hide among the grasses. These eventually fade as they mature.
Male pygmy hogs brandish sharp tusks that are so small, they're barely noticeable. The smaller hoglets are even more vulnerable to predators like mongooses, cats, and crows. The defensive strategy of a pygmy hog, then, is to run and hide in the tall grasses.
This species is a grassland specialist: convert the grasses to low-cut fields or lush forest, and the pygmy hogs cannot survive. Many of the hogs likely vanished when the grasslands along the southern base of the Himalayas began to be altered at the start of the 20th century.
Today, the pygmy hog is an endangered species, with an estimated population of 100 to 250 individuals.