I’LL lay a bet there are no Raccoon Dogs in South Africa and I had not heard of them until I incidentally saw two on a television programme about Heathrow’s Animal Reception Centre (ARC).
These two dog-like creatures were found in the vicinity of the airport and re-located by ARC’s staff to more appropriate quarters, a zoo, I think.
Its scientific name Nyctereutes procyonoides means something like `night dog’, but it resembles a small bear, superficially a raccoon, more than anything else.
At home all over Eurasia now those found in Vietnam, Japan, Korea and China do differ from each other and the species resemble less active, short-legged Raccoons to which they’re not at all related.
These are the only members of the dog family which hibernate, although only for short periods at a time and usually when the temperature plummets to below 20C degrees.
A few have found their way, as dumped pets in Western Europe, where they have quickly been curtailed as threats to local wild-life.
Hunted originally for their soft and silky pelts, the Russians sought to breed them with mixed success for the fur trade as did other East European nations. They eat just about anything from cattle faeces to fresh fruit and berries and in fact do pose a threat to ground birds, rabbits and small deer.
The Raccoon Dogs have the interesting characteristic that they can conceive while pregnant and they come into oestrus far more frequently than true canines, making them easier to breed, of course.
They colonise suitable habitat quickly and easily and in a few decades they became the most populous carnivore in Finland with huge annual bags being shot.
Despite their spectacular success as colonisers they have not made alarming inroads on native populations, competing successfully with other predators like Badgers and Foxes for smaller rodents.
They are however notorious carriers of all sorts of canine diseases and it is known that they can pass a catalogue of sicknesses to humans, including rabies which is not so prevalent in Europe as in Africa.
During the world-wide fashion rejection of the fur industry for ethical reasons, unscrupulous breeders produced Raccoon Dog pelts as `false fur’ and got away with it for years.
These animals can climb trees with their clawed feet with the ease of cats to get at bird nests or birds roosting in high branches.
