schaf

🎙️ Raccoons are just great, it's true. I know you didn't, like, actually ask, but here's a few of my favorite random-ass facts about raccoons:

• Despite years of assumptions that raccoons are solitary, they actually do live in groups! They tend to form what are known as 'fission-fusion societies,' where new members will routinely move in and out of loosely-aligned social groups. They'll typically share a single decent-sized common area, will often scavenge independently but engage in social behaviors in feeding areas, and will band together to protect each other against predators and even engage in altruistic food-sharing. What's cool about these groups is they're ad-hoc, like, it's not just for raccoons inside a family group who are all related; raccoon communities will take in outsiders or migrant raccoons as a form of mutualism. Like, hell yeah, raccoons. Solidarity.

• The little mask around their eyes? That actually has a survival function: it's an anti-glare coating, basically. It keeps brighter light from fouling their night vision and plays a role in their ability to see in like, almost-total darkness. This is so pronounced that albino raccoons have significantly worse night vision, so like, it actually does do a lot for them. Raccoons are cool enough they CAN wear sunglasses at night.

• Raccoons are smart. Like... really smart. Like 'the only reason we don't domesticate them is because they're too smart for most human caretakers' smart. They display higher capacity to discern between objects and faces than either cats or dogs, can remember the functions of human tools and devices, can operate doors, and routinely pass the mirror test with flying colors. Moreover, they're also very good at communicating information through a group, because they're so social. We don't have the same body of evidence about them that we do about crows due to fewer long-term studies, but we suspect that they're at least as smart as corvids.