Did you know: why it looks like Raccoons wash their food?
I don't care. They still my spirit animal.
Raccoons don't wash food for cleanliness but to enhance their sensitive paws' sense of touch, helping them to better perceive and identify objects, their texture, and safety before eating. They possess a hyper-sensitive paw with many nerve endings, and moistening this paw softens a natural protective layer, increasing nerve responsiveness and allowing for more precise information gathering on their food. This "dousing" behavior, rather than cleaning, helps them to distinguish edible from non-edible items and locate food in their environment.
Why Raccoons "Wash" Food
Enhanced Tactile Sensitivity:
Raccoons' front paws are packed with a huge number of nerve endings, but a protective layer can form over time. When they dip their paws in water, this layer softens, and their nerves become more responsive, similar to how light helps humans see better.
Better Information Gathering: This increased sensitivity allows raccoons to feel the texture, shape, and temperature of their food with more accuracy. This helps them to identify what is edible and safe to consume.
Locating and Identifying Food: By "feeling" their food, raccoons can memorize its characteristics. This helps them to recognize and locate similar foods more easily in the future. Not About Cleanliness The common term "washing" is a misnomer, as the primary motivation isn't cleanliness. The scientific name for the northern raccoon, Procyon lotor, translates to "washer," further reinforcing the belief, but this behavior is more about experiencing food than cleaning it. The action is more accurately described as "dousing". Where This Behavior is Seen This behavior is most prominent in wild raccoons that forage along water sources for prey like crayfish, snails, and worms. In captivity, raccoons may "wash" or douse their food as a substitute for their natural foraging behavior in the wild.
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having had a couple as pets, I would like to know exactly who came up with this? While some of this might be true, they do actually wash. If you threw a scrap of something to mine and it landed in the dirt, they would eat it, but if there was a water bowl nearby, they would literally wash the dirt off of it before eating.
The little one that I showed you the video of would take a piece of bread and if there was water, he would wash the bread until it was gone and then look at his hands as if wondering WTF
I often wonder about the science behind knowing this....does the scientist speak racoon?
@goliathtree I know the internet is full of misinformation but there are many sources that seem to confirm Bexsy's post. It does appears there is a dual benefit to their feeding behavior.
@MoveAlong @Bexsy I am not doubting what was told or read, I just wonder how people come up with it. All I know is what I saw and I was glad the little bugger had clean hands because he would sit on my shoulder and stick his finger in my ear....sort of a wet willy from a racoon
@Bexsy @MoveAlong Over the years, I remember having at least 4 pet racoons...They exhibited very human behaviour and are incredibly smart. They know what food is without touching it and if water is not available will eat it without washing it...or cleaning their fingers so they can tell what it is... Several observations, they are not good at sharing. As an example, as a kid you could share your ice cream cone with them. I would take a lick and then offer it and they would take a lick. After about four rounds the growl would come out and you were done with the ice cream cone. It was also an important observation that, when let in the house your mother would become angry when they ripped the drapes off the windows trying to climb up next to you on the couch.
They liked to play rough, to a certain point and then you would get a warning bite...not enough to draw blood just enough to remind you what they were capable of.
One lived in the maple tree next to the front door of the house and would come down every morning, not only for some of the cat food that she loved, but also to see us off to school. She would walk down the driveway about half way (and we walked all the way to school) and then stop and wait while we continued walking, by the time we got to the end of the driveway, she was on her way back to her tree.
Another scientific fact: All pet racoons are named Rocky. Male or female.
And...Their favorite food is smoked fish. They especially like the skin, even with scales. I never saw any of them wash the smoked fish...they just wolfed it down.
@MoveAlong We never used dogs. They were pretty thick around here and you could always get them in the mulberry trees. I remember on time when I was probably about 8 I was out with my Grandpa and my Great Uncle...I had one in a tree and was lining up my 22 holding the flashlight and my Uncle pushed the gun down, picked up a stick and climbed the tree and knocked the coon with the stick and it fell down. He told me, that way he didn't have to worry about a poor shot on my part putting a hole where it didn't belong.
Coon hunting was how we ended up with pets because when they were young they were very adaptable and you generally only got bit a couple times until you learned to wear leather gloves.
@goliathtree I never kept one as a pet. I knew people who did. There were coon hunting clubs around. There was competition between clubs and individual prizes. like the owner of the dog that treed the most coons might win a rifle or shotgun or hunting coat or something akin to hunting. Also there was alot of drinking and cussing going on. You didn't take guns on the hunt though. It was just based on treeing and identifying that it was a 'coon instead of a possum or something else.
After I got out of school and became more civilized I kind of got away from it.
@MoveAlong I haven't hunted coon in over 30 years. Ate a lot of it when I was younger. The video is from about 5 years ago when I picked a young orphaned one up on the road (mom was roadkill).
@goliathtree We ate a lot of game growing up too. I loved to squirrel hunt. Fried squirrel and brown gravy and biscuits or squirrel and dumplings. Except for the occasional deer or turkey that a grandson or nephew shoots I haven't eaten any other game in well over 50 years.
@Infamous607 LOL, I get it. You would too had you grown up in the 50s and 60s in the hills of Tennessee. But today you couldn't pay me to shoot a squirrel much less eat one. Deer? I could watch them all day but can not imagine ever shooting one again.
