Raccoons have the most sensitive sense of touch of any animal known other than primates.
Over two thirds of the sensory processing power of a raccoon’s brain are dedicated to its sense of touch, while the critter’s tiny hands are packed with over ten times the number of nerve endings as a human hand.
These very sensitive hands develop a thin protective barrier over time, sort of like a callous, but the layer is softened by water.
When a raccoon dips its hands into water, it can feel with perfect acuity. A raccoon will explore its food, memorizing and savoring its texture to learn about it and to be better able to identify and search for it in the future.
Source: https://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/raccoons-wash-food.htm
Source #2: post from a raccoon rescue that I can’t find now 😩
The German word for raccoon is “wash bear.”
The scientifically term for them is Procyon lotor. This neo-Latin name translates to "before-dog washer.”
same in finnish
I properly fear those adorable, violent rabies vectors. Like this little lady (saw later with 3 of her kits) angling to come in for tea and whatever cat was handy.
:3
rabies vectors
Don’t forget the roundworm.
Why they are so good at operating the latch on a chicken coop too lol.
They’ve got sensitive hands and engineering degrees.
According to this topic all you need to do is keep their hands dry!
Hand towels, gotcha
Insanely delicate palate and love of food
Eats out of bins
What do they mean by this?
I’d argue this doesn’t mean they aren’t washing their food, it just may not be intentional.
Perhaps for the raccoon they are indeed doing it to better feel the food, but as a consequence they clean debris from the food which ended up being beneficial.
I’m not an expert in this, but it seems reasonable to a degree. Do you know of any studies that assess if this actually improves food in any meaningful way in terms of cleanliness?
So interesting! And it explains so much.
memorizing and savoring its texture to learn about it and to be better able to identify and search for it in the future
Then they eat spoiled garbage.
Blame the humans for that
I was going to say we humans seem to be the only animals that don’t poop in our water, and then I remembered all those history videos about people dumping chamber pots and the like upstream… I guess we’re all guilty!
That’s one of the things that made Andersonville prison camp so hellish. They built the Confederate and prisoner latrines up stream.
One of the later built prison camps, Camp Lawton, the commander made a point that all the latrines were built downstream.
It’s amazing how long we knew pooping in the water was bad for, and yet we kept doing it
The Great Stink in London England wasn’t that long ago in the grand scheme of things. They dumped all their sewage in their river and then wondered why it stank.
Somewhat amazing that it took so long to come up with a real solution to a problem literally even human has, coming up with a proper sewage system.
Eh, only a problem if you stay in one place. Pooping in the woods while following the a buffalo herd isn’t really an issue.
I suspect that lots of animals are more sensible than that! e.g. cats instinctually bury their feces. Birds just poop wherever.
Cats don’t bury their feces for hygienic reasons though, they bury it to hide signs of their presence from larger predators.
still better than dogs eating it.
Any reason’s fine. Many humans only do it because of social norms, not because they care about hygiene. See also, many humans only pretend to wash their hands after using a toilet.
I’d argue that the hygienic advantages of feces burying certainly help with the overall health of the species, even if it’s not the main reason. Might not even be a huge issue in nature due to the solitary nature of wild cats, but e.g. farm cats are often living in pretty close proximity to each other.
In French we call them “Raton Laveur” which means “Washing Racoon”
Wasser bear in Germany.
Fuckers stole my pizza off my deck this weekend.
Awh I thought we were all gonna give funny answers. Since clearly they wash it ever since Greg made that candyfloss vanish completely and now raccoons everywhere are trying to figure out how to make things vanish so that no trash can ever stay locked away ever again.
