They are also adorable

I guess Disney's Pocahontas made it cool to have a raccoon friend. Those fat little furry blubber balls of teeth and rabies are NOT good pets.

That's why you don't adopt the rabid ones.....

I love my trash pandas. I want one as a pet. They’re so cute. Have you ever seen their cute hands!?

Our gift to the world!

One of us, one of us!

Eh still, they aren't really domesticated, so owning one would still be asking for trouble

They’re in a zoo in the Netherlands.

It’s a real travesty that we haven’t worked harder to domesticate them.

Raccoons are very cute, but they will literally destroy your house.

Even the non-rabid ones are super hard to take care of. They’re not hard to keep alive, but they don’t want to be captive and will destroy your house.

In NYC’s Central Park, the zoo is the one place without raccoons.

True!

When I went to Spanish zoo a few decades ago it was such an odd thing to see a racoon in an exhibit after seeing them so often in the wild it was no big deal anymore.

Guardians of the Galaxy lied to me.

There is an island in the Mississippi called Cat Island. When the French first charted it had a huge raccoon population but the French just assumed they were weird looking cats.

Most of the raccoon family makes terrible pets--coatis, raccoons, kinkajous.

About the only species that's relatively docile is the ringtail.

I've heard anecdotally that they make great pets as juveniles, but are way too aggressive as adults.

Opossums are also native, the only native marsupial in the Americas!

Not really. Thor refers to him as rabbit because when he was a Norway regular, they didn't have raccoons.

Can confirm. Just had to get rid of 4 at work. Working out of a double wide, they took out 60% of the insulation and disconnected the vents from the AC unit. It cost a lot to get that repaired.

To be honest, Rocket being an asshole for no reason is pretty on the nose for actual raccoons.

They are cute.
I met with one last week, thinking it was a cat.
But it was making sounds while walking so instead I thought it was a dog.
But then getting closer it looked like a very strange not-doggy thing at all.
Once close enough it turned around and completely froze.

It was huge so I guess it was emptying stray cats food that old ladies are giving out.

This was a bit random just like the encounter.

I had one growing up. You HAVE to get them before they open their eyes. The worse problem I can remember was they can get into just about anything. You'll want to babyproof the cabinets. They can be like huskies, leave them alone too long and they start to tear stuff up. If you want to get one you'll want to check local laws since in some places it can be illegal. Not so illegal cops come looking but normal vets can refuse to treat it I believe.

Can confirn. I am French and I still think they are weird looking cats.

incredible how certain species adapted so well to live among human populations while others dissappeared completely

This is like the opposite of a TIL I had a year ago. I assumed they only lived in North America. I was very surprised to hear Germany had a raccoon population

But Rocket is not from North America.

Given that they are native there, that is how it should be.

They look a bit creepy with their white ghostly faces, but are really quite chill and harmless.

I stumbled across someone feeding them over the park wall up near 108th or so. More trash pandas than I've ever seen. A racoon platoon, if you will. Maybe three or four dozen all waiting for food. As a kid, I recall seeing one casually scaling a fence to the alley between buildings. People forget that Manhattan's got wildlife.

Theyre very chill and cute. Theyre great at eating ticks and stuff like that too. Be kind to our derpy marsupial friends

Who the hell introduced the raccoon elsewhere?

Davy crocket wore a racoon as a hat

They eat fast food. I like them for that.

Are there raccoons outside of the US and Canada?

They are just little guys.

In Japan they were introduced in the 1970s after idiots bought them as pets because of a popular anime (Rascal). They’ve now spread to every prefecture and are pushing out native species like tanuki. There’s an active trap and destroy order for them throughout the country.

Turkeys are the true tick eating heroes

Marsupials probably originated in North America in the late Cretaceous or early Paleogene, and spread to South America, Antarctica and Australia while the supercontinent Gondwana was still united. Currently about 30% of the extant species of marsupials are native to the Americas.

The opossum on the other hand probably originated in what is now the Amazon rainforest, there are still several species of Didelphidae in South and Central America, but I think the best known is the North American Opossum.

One time in college I was walking my drunk ass home and decided to get a slice of pizza. While paying I see the back screen door of the joint swinging open just a crack, then 1, 2 and then 3 raccoons scamper across the floor.

They didn’t even look around. They knew exactly what they were doing. I slur something like “dude, yer getn robbed” and this dude turns around the bandits freeze in their steps and look at us like children caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Dude just calmly says “guys, hey, come on.”, and they still don’t move. He walked over to the door, opened it, and said “out”. The raccoons just kind of looked at each other and then slowly walked back out the door.

Buddy walks back over to me shaking his head “fucking trash pandas”.

Apparently they lived in the alley out back and were usually pretty chill. The pizza was maybe a 7/10.

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Where I live it's weird going to my local zoo and seeing a prairie dog exhibit, while watching wild prairie dogs run around outside of it.

We had Guinea Fowl that hung out with our turkeys. Those bastards were tick destroyers

If only I could get them to stop digging up my lawn/garden.

So far I’ve learned from two separate reddit posts that tomatoes and raccoons are native to North America. Is this today’s karma farming topic?

The pause while looking at them…. I’ve encountered that before, along with them having the look of “oh, me, I’m not doing anything here”. Wonder if it’s universal.

They’re also vicious rabid bastards that live in sewers

Well I’ve never seen or heard of a racoon outside of the States.

That was the beginning of their slow-rolling takeover...

So are redditors, so you probably shouldn’t be casting judgement haha

I can't believe there was a raccoon in a zoo 😂 I work at a pizza place and we have a permanent family that eats from our dumpster I literally see them every day

Australia has Rottnest island because the Dutch thought the Quokkas were rats

Tanooki Mario now makes so much more sense

https://www.mariowiki.com/Tanooki_Suit

HA! You colonizers brought opossums, black rats, feral swine, English starlings, and released cats that have decimated the ecosystem.

TAKE OUR TRASH PANDAS!!!

I actually really needed to know this, ty

So where else are they then?

And thus the phrase:

"There's more than one way to skin a cat"

because early settlers thought things like raccoons were cats.

Our ancestors were not nearly as clever as we give them credit when it came to classification of organisms. Especially given how long beavers and capibara were considered fish.

Apparently they have small colonies throughout the west and quite a few places in the east

What about the Raccoon Dogs of Japan!?

Well they make good hats so idk

IIRC Japan had them become extremely invasive because people read a story about a girl that had a pet raccoon, and promptly got one themselves and realized fairly quickly that they don’t make great pets

Germany, Ukraine, Russia, Japan. I've heard of them being seen in France too. In Europe they were brought over for their fur but escaped. In Japan there was an anime that made raccoons popular pets, and a lot escaped or were released.

That's more of a Catholic loophole. If anything it proves they were clever.

Yea Just … Get a nice cat or dog.

The best wildlife we have is the birds of prey. It’s pretty amazing being in the asphalt jungle and then see a red tailed hawk just tear into a dirty ass pigeon.

Linda!?

I'm German, we have a number of raccoons in the wild and also some in zoos. I've never seen any outside myself (except for maybe, maybe a single overran specimen but my sis is stupid).

The poor fella in that zoo has orientation problems, some sort of damage to the his inner ear. He's better off in the zoo anyway and people love him.

Hey I'm in NA and I don't have any but I know lots of people who do Why would you import some

I knew they exist but damn, just outside of Minneapolis at my house saw one sneaking around. Can’t say I’ve seen a living one. Derpy does seem to be a fair term.

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In germany, they are descended from four raccoons set free to enrich the local fauna in 1934 and various fur farm escapees.

No wonder that Russian was so stoked to steal a raccoon from the Kherson zoo.

No where else has racoons? Well if you've never seen one in real life....go ahead and go up to one and say hi. They are super fluffy and love to be petted!

You know why you have raccoons running around in the wild in your neck of the woods?

Nazis. They thought it would “enrich the local fauna.”

Now we have wolves in Germany and everyone involved is mad lol

Mapaches

Does it? Like how is the loophole "clever"? Just seems like one of their arbitrary rules became inconvenient, so they arbitrarily changed it.

That’s not where the phrase comes from

we have one that climbs onto our balcony at night when we remember to stock the birdfeeders

What about Japanese racoons?

The USSR released some in the Caucasus, so now there are raccoons in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Iran etc.

Do you guys hunt at all?

To be fair, it wasn't all Catholics collectively writing these rules. Popes, cardinals and the likes wrote up all the weird religious beurocracy so bored monks with too much time on their hands came up with loopholes to make living in a monastery more bearable. Too many fish days? Beavers and ducks are fish now. Meals must be eaten in silence? Talk in sign language. And do all this while hammered constantly on home brewed mead.

I don't

I didn't know they'd been introduced anywhere else.

Sure there were reasons and background for why it played out that way.

Just saying "clever" does not really enter into it.

I am honestly surprised they never brought them to New Zealand. I swear they've introduced every other animal here.

Waschbar is the cutest name ever

There’s a raccoon at the Saigon zoo in Vietnam. No joke, it’s there because it hitched a ride in a shipping container of frozen meat a couple years ago. It ate up a bunch of the meat during the journey and then made itself a little shelter with the leftover boxes to stay warm.

TIL raccoons do not only live in America

Guess what animal the Canary Islands are named for.

In the Netherlands hunting wolves is illegal, and I think that ban comes from the EU, so Germany probably can't hunt them. We recently got wolves in our country as wel (they came from Germany). It's the return of a natural predator that should've been in our ecosystem all along. Plenty of people are still mad about it though.

I visited Italy recently and didn’t see a single squirrel there. Also, there pigeons almost always seemed to have fucked up feet.

Tanooki Mario is a tanuki, which are animals native to Japan which look very similar to raccoons. In English, they are even called "raccoon dogs".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_raccoon_dog

Cats with hands.

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Same with me and kangaroos and emus.

USSR also grabbed some crabbed and brought them across the towards the Fjords and the crabs decimated populations there

"You know what our dumpsters are missing?..."

I have heard stories about them lifting our typical roof tiles to dig into the insulation.

Dogs

I mean, people have kangaroos in zoos and I can see mobs of them every weekend on my walks (or on the road when the idiots go for a wander). Just depends on what you're used it.

Interesting, as the British called Quokkas native cats!

If I have to deal with trash pandas, then so do you.

Nooooo, damn that sucks! I love the tanuki

Raccoons are so adaptable too, they would easily out compete many local species around the world

Come to Toronto, there’s 3 raccoons to every human /s

Chill? Are we talking about the same animal? They angry!

Australian friend said the same thing about kangaroos. He said it's like seeing a deer.

Trash pandas with creepy little hands.

I didn't know this, thanks!

They will show their teeth if they feel threatened, but they won't attack. Look up animal bites with your state's health dept and you won't find any opossums. They are more likely to roll over and play dead -- "play possum"

> after seeing them so often in my trash cans

ftfy

https://www.seversondells.com/blog/opossums-and-ticks

There's an adorable white one in the Denver Zoo for some reason lmao. I think I spent more time watching it than the Elephants.

I love the on going joke in Parks and Rec that there is a part of Pawnee that belongs to the Raccoons. "They have their part of town and we have ours, that's the truce."

I feel like raccoons could take over basically anywhere that isn’t Antarctica or the middle of a desert. Those mfs are smart as fuck and crafty as hell, studies have shown they’re far smarter than cats and dogs and are more at the level of monkeys.

Growing up I lived in a very rural house, we would lock our doors not because of people, but because the raccoons could open doors. And to go even further, we would leave a key on top of the door. One time we got home and saw a raccoon trying to put the key inside the door. He couldn’t figure out how to get it in, but he was smart enough to recognize that he needed to get the key in the door to open it.

They’re also bigger in person than they look in pictures

>He couldn’t figure out how to get it in, but he was smart enough to recognize that he needed to get the key in the door to open it.

that’s some planet of the apes shit

In South America there is a native similar species, Procyon cancrivorus

This is not true. There are the shrew opossums which despite the similar common name are a separate order from the "true" opossums, of which the Virginia opossum is only one example. And the monito del monte is another marsupial in the Americas which is even more distant from the opossums.

The fact you may be thinking of is that the Virginia opossum is the only marsupial native to the United States (and bits of Canada). I feel like I've heard it phrased as "native to North America" before but even that isn't true because there are other opossum species in Central America and into Mexico as well.

That might just be prairie dog prison. You don't want to know what kind of prairie crimes those dogs have committed.

Read that as eating dicks..

Was about to go adopt one.

Ah, the Noth American Trashius Pandis.

It's interesting to think something so common here is unique elsewhere.

I've literally got a live trap outside because a racoon ate two of my chickens last week. Racoons are about as common as squirrels. When I was a kid, I befriended one with breadsticks. I could hand feed it, and then it would scamper away like a bandit with it's masked face!

As an Aussie, I get this when I see kangaroos where I grew up, I’d leave my house in the morning and there’s guaranteed to be a mob sitting out the front

Lots of wild raccoons in Madrid. Someone must have let them free

Yeah wolves are protected in certain parts of the US too. I just wondered how much of your population hunted in general.

Very little I'd think. Getting a weapons permit and a weapon can be a bit of a bitch. And hunting itself is rather limited in when and what and how much you can hunt.

Oy!?

I went to the Oklahoma City Zoo and saw bison. The people behind me said "this is boring. We see bison in our backyard all the time"

>Especially given how long beavers and capibara were considered fish.

Thats not because they thought they were actually fish though, anymore than how bees are considered fish under one particular section of California fish and game law. It's just shoehorning one thing under a different category for a specific purpose and having people on the Internet not understand why because they don't bother to umtry to understand how it got to be that way.

Yeah it was actually crazy. I guess he had watched us using the key before and tried to give it a shot himself. We basically just watched in amazement as he tried to get the key in there lol

I always wonder what the hell these people were thinking. Rascal established that racoons are terrible pets.

I grew up next to a salt marsh, had so many raccoons in the neighborhood. When I moved out as an adult, I discovered that most other places barely had any racoons at all. I miss the little guys.

had a similar experience at a Deer exhibit in Colorado (I don't remember what city). None of the locals cared and I heard a kid ask "are those the same ones that we saw in our yard?"

He also isnt a raccoon

Tanuki arent raccoons but Japan also has raccoons that were brought over as pets but then released

There are also raccoons in south america called coatis

Yep I saw one at a zoo in Japan and I was totally amused. Here in the US they're just a nuisance- like you might as well have a zoo exhibit of rats or pigeons.

I'm not all that surprised, I remember at one point when I was living in Ontario they were sort of at war with raccoons when trying to make a garbage container that prevented raccoons from getting in and was inexpensive enough.

At one point the lid was made more complicated so they wouldn't be able to open it...but this resulted in the material itself being somewhat cheaper, and raccoons would scratch the bottom of the containers until they made a hole to grab stuff out of.

If that were in the US, it would have been an exhibit of something else that a raccoon had broken into.

I remember doing battle with a raccoon in the middle of the night who had come in through the cat door to have some kitty crunchies.

Ten year old me and a broom against a big fat raccoon. He was completely unimpressed as I tried to shuffleboard him out the door.

In my experience turkeys tend to spread the ticks lol usually way more ticks in areas with turkeys

I don't get this... isn't this like saying "Kangaroos are native to Australia"?

it's like Thais seeing Tokay gecko in the zoo in the US or sold as pets... just go out in Thailand and look up a wall yo

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Raccoon

You should tell Marvel, then.

You're welcome 😁

Where is there enough wild space in the Netherlands to support wolf packs?

You described a loophole.

CoonWorld

?

Just looked up a tanuki.

It's probably at the local zoo!

Mostly de Veluwe. Though exact locations are kept secret to protect the wolves.

No, that's a question mark

OK I'll be more clear, what is it you think you're contributing here?

It was incest and bank robbery.

We're narrowing down what a loophole is. There seems to be confusion.

Screw you they're pretty kitties.

Take our trash pandas and our skunks too we have way too many here the cops here in North Dakota just murderd a raccoon a few weeks ago because some woman took it into a bar and the bartender thought it might have rabies so they hunted it down and shot her pet raccoon that she had been caring for since finding it on the side of the road as a baby and raising it as a pet

I'm pretty sure he's meant to be a regular Earth raccoon that was experimented on. The Nova Corps mention he's the result "illegal enhancement of a lower life form."

https://www.thehamdenjournal.com/world/north-dakota-family-is-devastated-and-fundraising-for-a-lawyer-after-they-say-police-killed-their-pet-raccoon-that-was-sought-in-a-local-rabies-scare/343162/

>There seems to be confusion.

Confusion seems to be entirely on your end.

For one, you just replied to yourself, not me.

Two, the conversation was not about the definition of loopholes, pretty clear to everyone else, how embarrassing for you.

Take our trash pandas and our skunks too we have way too many here the cops here in North Dakota just murderd a raccoon a few weeks ago because some woman took it into a bar and the bartender thought it might have rabies so they hunted it down and shot her pet raccoon that she had been caring for since finding it on the side of the road as a baby and raising it as a pet source https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/north-dakota-family-is-devastated-and-fundraising-for-a-lawyer-after-they-say-police-killed-their-pet-raccoon-that-was-sought-in-a-local-rabies-scare/ar-AA11Yu63

next up on prairie dog svu

Are your eyes decorative

No but I'm guessing your soul is.