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Authors: Warner Shedd

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Along came a wolverine, which, curious about this strange scent, followed the trapper’s trail. There it found animals immobilized in traps—a hungry wolverine’s version of Easy Street. Since wolverines are far from stupid— though certainly not endowed with supernatural intelligence—the wolverine quickly learned that following the trapper’s trail meant easy pickings, and frequently checked the trapline in the course of its peregrinations.

To the superstitious trapper, it seemed as though the wolverine was acting out of malice and trying to put him out of business. This notion was reinforced when the trapper, despite repeated efforts, failed to see the wolverine in order to shoot it, and the wolverine evaded traps set for it.

The final act came when the wolverine, particularly hungry that day, happened by the trapper’s cabin. Its keen sense of smell detected food within, and, with its great strength, long claws, and formidable teeth, it was able to break through a door, shuttered window, or vent. Once inside, the wolverine tore open containers of flour, sugar, bacon, beans, and other goodies. After gorging itself and leaving the interior of the cabin in an unholy shambles, the wolverine went on its way.

When the trapper returned and found most of his winter staples wiped out, he had no choice but to leave—additional proof of the wolverine-as-devil-in-animal-form. Of course, in addition to genuine superstition, it was only natural for the trapper to embellish the story a little—well, maybe more than a little—in order to explain his way out of an embarrassing situation. Of such threads are the fabric of animal reputations often woven!

The reputed ferocity of the wolverine toward humans, and its supposedly supernatural cunning, is a good example of the mythology that has grown up around this creature. There are, for instance, several documented cases of people raising wolverines, which made rather docile pets. (Raising wild animals in captivity is only rarely a good idea, however, and should be left strictly to qualified experts!) Clearly the wolverine’s ferocity toward humans, like the fisher’s, has been greatly enlarged.

A cornered wolverine in the wild is quite a different proposition. In keeping with its bearlike appearance, the wolverine is reliably reported to have a most bearlike growl, quite out of keeping with its modest size. Combined with an impressive display of teeth, this is sufficient to make almost any animal or human think twice about coming closer. Nevertheless, packs of wolves are known at least occasionally to kill wolverines.

If much about the wolverine has been grossly exaggerated, its strength has not. For example, one wolverine in Alaska was observed dragging a Dall sheep carcass three to four times its weight for roughly two miles; numerous other feats of wolverine strength have also been noted by wildlife biologists. In particular, wolverines are notorious for chewing or breaking their way out of extremely strong, well-constructed cages, for its exceptionally powerful jaws, designed by nature for crunching up carcasses and bones while scavenging, can also wreak havoc with man’s efforts to confine it.

Wolverines are notable travelers, constantly on the move as they scour their territory for food. Indeed, the speed and distance of their odysseys evoke awe even in sober scientists: a wolverine can run for miles without stopping, and may travel fifty to sixty miles in a single day, while covering a range of several hundred square miles.

Wolverines also have other adaptations to help them cope with their often brutal environment. Its outsized paws are a major asset while traveling in deep snow, and formidable claws enable wolverines to dig out prey, cached food, and the kills of other predators; these same claws also make wolverines good tree climbers.

The wolverine’s coat displays yet another evolutionary gift. The dense, warm underfur is topped by long guard hairs that are tapered so that they shed frost and ice much more easily than the hairs of other animals. Natives of the far north long ago realized this and began using wolverine fur in parka hoods: when breath condenses into frost around the hood, it’s easily brushed off the tapered wolverine hairs.

Except for a brief summer mating period, wolverines are solitary. Somehow, even in such large territories, males manage to find the females; then, after mating, they go their separate ways for the remainder of the year. Implantation is delayed until late winter, and two or three young, small and blind, are born in the spring. The natal den may be a deep crevice in the rocks or a space beneath a stump, log, or blown-down tree. The young wolverines are independent by fall, and disperse to seek their own territories.

While there is concern that the remnant wolverine populations in the lower forty-eight states may be disappearing, the wolverine seems to be thriving, at least for the present, in the vast reaches of the far north. It is a fascinating and unusual creature that deserves far more study and attention than it has heretofore received.

THE SEA OTTER

Largest of the weasel family in North America, the sea otter
(Enhydra lutris)
has gone the river otter one better and become, for all practical purposes, a fully aquatic marine mammal. Although sea otters occasionally come on land for brief periods, such as waiting out severe storms or to bask on the rocks, most of their lives are spent completely in and under the waters of the North Pacific.

Hunted relentlessly for their valuable fur, sea otters were brought to the edge of extinction, and at one time only about two thousand remained throughout their entire range. Now, after years of full protection, there are probably 150,000 to 200,000 of them—a remarkable comeback.

Like river otters, sea otters are much loved by everyone—well, almost everyone; Alaska crab fishermen and California abalone and sea urchin fishermen tend to loathe sea otters with a passion. According to sea otter expert David Garshelis, groups of otters, known as pods, can indeed severely deplete local crab populations, at least temporarily, in Alaskan waters.

Jack Ames of the California Fish and Game Department believes that sea otters were historically in balance with abalone, sea urchins, and other species on which the otters feed. Then, when the sea otters were virtually wiped out 150 or more years ago, the population of abalone, sea urchins, and other creatures prized by humans as food grew rapidly. Soon a thriving commercial fishery grew up around these species and came to be regarded as “traditional.”

With the return of sea otters in substantial numbers during the second half of this century, the old balance between predator and prey, which didn’t include commercial fishing by humans, was reestablished. As Ames says, a commercial abalone fishery simply can’t exist in the presence of sea otters.

Sea otters commonly weigh up to eighty or eighty-five pounds, and a few specimens have reached one hundred pounds. Lacking the seal’s insulating layer of blubber, sea otters survive the cold ocean water by virtue of the densest fur of any animal—100,000 hairs per square centimeter!

Nor is this extraordinarily warm, thick coat the sea otter’s only adaptation for marine life. Very large lungs serve a dual function: they allow for extended time underwater, and they also permit the sea otter to float effortlessly on the surface. Indeed, sea otters actually sleep while floating on their backs.

In addition, sea otters have completely webbed, flipper like feet that are perfect for swimming, though extremely awkward on land. Moreover, in another curious evolutionary twist, the hind feet are “backwards”; that is, the big toe on the hind foot is on the outside of the foot, rather than on the side toward the body. This peculiar adaptation may make it easier for the otter to swim on its back, a position in which it spends much of its time.

Besides sleeping on its back, the sea otter will often emerge from a dive with both a shellfish and a small, flat rock. Rolling onto its back, with the rock on its stomach, the sea otter next holds the shellfish in both front paws and pounds it against the rock to break the shell and expose the meat within. Certainly this is a fascinating use of a tool by this animal!

One popular myth, at least as far as Alaskan sea otters are concerned, is that oil spills such as the infamous
Exxon Valdez
disaster wiped out sea otters along much of the Alaska coast. It’s true that sea otters are more likely to die from oil spills than are seals; the latter have blubber to insulate them, while sea otters, once their protective fur is matted by oil, succumb to the cold. However, as destructive as oil spills are, they don’t reach into many bays and setbacks in the shoreline, where substantial numbers of sea otters avoid the oil and survive. Oil spills such as that from the
Exxon Valdez
certainly do great harm to the local population of sea otters, but don’t eliminate them.

Male sea otters often congregate in large rafts or pods, some containing more than five hundred otters. Females also form pods, though substantially smaller ones.

Like most of their weasel family brethren, sea otters have delayed implantation. Unlike their relatives, however, baby sea otters are fairly large (about three pounds) at birth, with eyes wide open and a furred body. This makes perfect sense; blind, nearly naked young would have little chance of surviving in the frigid ocean.

In virtually all cases, the mother sea otter bears only a single pup. Although relatively few sea otter births have actually been observed because they happen so quickly, pups apparently may be born either on land or in the water. The pup sleeps cradled on its mother’s stomach, while she floats easily and contentedly—a sight that has certainly helped endear the sea otter to countless people.

Despite their incursions against commercially valuable species such as crabs, abalone, and sea urchins, it’s gratifying to know that sea otters are no longer in danger of extinction. They are unique and fascinating—an extreme example of evolutionary adaptation in a family that has specialized in it.

Just as the last piece of an intricate jigsaw puzzle, snapping into place with a faint but satisfying click, makes the image on the puzzle’s face entire, the sea otter’s mastery of the marine environment completes the picture of the weasel family’s extraordinary diversity. Stemming from a common ancestor some 38 million years ago, family members evolved to utilize virtually every major type of habitat: trees, the land surface, the subterranean, freshwater, and the sea. Only the air—the exclusive domain of the bats among mammals—is denied to this amazing family!

15

Cute Isn’t Tame: The Raccoon

MYTHS

Raccoons make good pets.

Raccoons are extremely clean and wash their food before eating it.

MOST PEOPLE FIND RACCOONS
(PROCYON LOTOR)
EXTREMELY APPEALING, AND THE MOST FREQUENT TERM APPLIED TO THEM IS “CUTE.” Cute they may appear, with their black masks and furry, ringed tails, but biologists and others who deal regularly with wildlife take a somewhat more jaundiced view of this animal.

Because of the cuteness factor, especially in baby raccoons, people often want to make pets out of them. Anthropomorphism strikes again: raccoons are cute, so they must be nice, cuddly little animals that would make good pets. This is a big mistake! The adorable little raccoon that someone picks up and takes home frequently grows into a vicious and highly destructive nuisance.

Despite their visual appeal, raccoons are fierce predators and tend to have nastier dispositions around humans than do many other predators. Yes, some people have successfully made pets of raccoons (almost always illegally), but far more often the “pet” baby raccoon turns into a nasty-tempered creature that bites, scratches, and raises havoc with household possessions.

Much more serious, however, is the threat of rabies; in fact, one of the major rabies strains is called the raccoon strain because raccoons are its primary carrier. Rabies frequently has a long incubation period of several months’ duration, so the cute little raccoon that someone tries to raise as a pet may become rabid weeks or months later.

Raccoon

A Massachusetts woman serves as Exhibit Number One in this regard. Unwilling to see three little raccoons euthanized, she ignored all warnings and raised them illegally. One died three months later and tested positive for rabies. As a result, nineteen people had to receive rabies shots at a cost of over one thousand dollars per person!

Rabies isn’t the only threat from handling raccoons, either. Enter raccoon roundworm
(Baylisascaris cyonis),
which can pose grave risks to human health. Although this parasite hasn’t previously received much publicity, it is now becoming more widely recognized as a potentially serious problem.

This roundworm, common and widespread in raccoons, is especially prevalent in the Northeast and Midwest. It causes a disease, known as
larva
migrans,
in over fifty species of animals, including humans. Larva migrans can cause blindness and is potentially fatal. Children are especially susceptible to this disease.

The eggs of raccoon roundworm are carried in the coon’s feces and can live in the soil for years. To make matters worse, raccoons carrying this parasite don’t display any symptoms of disease, thus making seemingly healthy “pet” raccoons a double hazard. Other animals infected with larva migrans exhibit symptoms somewhat similar to those of rabies, and are frequently reported as rabies suspects.

Warnings about these twin hazards seem to fall on deaf ears. My own state of Vermont is currently in the midst of an epidemic of the raccoon strain of rabies. The media and the Health Department issue constant warnings to avoid raccoons and other potential carriers of rabies and roundworm. Despite this barrage of publicity, my file on raccoons contains numerous bulletins from the Vermont Health Department veterinarian, Dr. Robert Johnson, featuring pleas such as this: “We are swamped with cases involving people caring for baby raccoons. Rabies and raccoon roundworms are a major concern. Leave Wild Animals in the Wild.” It appears that so-called common sense is a most uncommon commodity nowadays.

Because of rabies and roundworm, if for no other reason, never, NEVER handle raccoons, including orphaned babies wandering about! Instead, call a qualified wildlife rehabilitator. Most state wildlife agencies have a list of licensed rehabilitators who know how to handle wildlife safely without undue risk to themselves.

The raccoon’s scientific name comes from the Greek:
Procyon
descends from
pro,
before, and
kyon,
dog, while
lotor
means one that washes. Folklore has it that raccoons are very clean animals that wash their food before eating it, and it’s true that when water is handy, raccoons will often dip food in it— hence the scientific name of
lotor.

No one is quite sure why raccoons behave in this fashion, although it’s certainly not a sign of cleanliness. It’s been postulated that raccoons sometimes dunk their food because they lack salivary glands and need to moisten the food for easier swallowing. That theory is incorrect, since raccoons have normal salivary glands, but, saliva or not, perhaps wetting down comestibles renders them easier for the animal to devour. This raccoon trait remains something of a mystery, but one fact is abundantly clear: raccoons eagerly consume large quantities of food far from water without any scruples whatsoever. That should abolish any notions about raccoon cleanliness.

The name
raccoon
derives from the Algonquian
arakunem,
meaning “handscratcher,” or “one that scratches with its hands.” Early European settlers soon corrupted this into
raccoon,
and raccoon it has been ever since, but the animals are often simply referred to as coons, especially in rural areas.

Native Americans were keen students of the habits and abilities of the various wildlife species with which they had contact. This should come as no surprise; after all, animals were sources of food, clothing, tools, and other necessities. It’s interesting to note, then, that the multitude of names given the raccoon by numerous Native American tribes nearly all make reference to its front paws. These generally translate into terms such as “touch things,” “pick things up,” “grasper,” “handle things,” and so on.

These names pay tribute to the raccoon’s clever front paws, which are indeed almost as useful as hands. Those nimble little fingers are extraordinarily dexterous, and the coon’s ability to pry, twist, lift, turn, push, jiggle, and otherwise gain entrance into containers and various other places where it shouldn’t be is nearly legendary!

This manual dexterity is coupled with a great deal of apparent intelligence. Intelligence is a difficult thing to measure; witness the huge disagreements among experts over what constitutes human intelligence, let alone intelligence in other species. Still, most animal experts would concede that coons rate rather high on the intelligence scale. Put together the cleverness to devise ways to get into things with the dexterity to accomplish them, and you have the combination that can make the raccoon so destructive in many situations.

On cursory inspection, the raccoon’s appearance might suggest at least a passing relationship to dogs, foxes, coyotes, and other members of the dog tribe. Indeed, the genus name
Procyon—
“before dog”—makes a bow in that direction. Raccoons are more closely related to bears than to dogs, however.

Nate, a wonderful black Labrador that we once had, certainly recognized that raccoons weren’t related to dogs. Whenever he saw a fox or another dog, Nate’s body and tail language simply radiated bonhomie. On the other hand, he was utterly infuriated by raccoons and missed no opportunity to kill one whenever he found it in our barn. Nate had many epic battles with this sworn enemy and—remarkably, since coons are savage fighters—never incurred a single wound from these encounters.

Although they’re distantly related to bears, raccoons share a separate family with their nearest kin—ringtails and coatis—and hence aren’t closely related to any other group of mammals. The ringtail
(Bassariscus astutus)
ranges from southern coastal Oregon through California and the Southwest down into Mexico. Marked in similar fashion to a raccoon, it looks much like a coon that’s been stretched so that it will fit through a narrow tube. The larger coati
(Nasua narica)
has a long, slender tail with rings far less distinct than the coon’s, as well as a less distinct facial mask; north of Mexico, it inhabits only the very southern portions of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

Raccoons are classified as carnivores and are certainly meat-eaters, but in fact they are omnivorous. Fruit, acorns and other nuts, frogs, crayfish, salamanders, mussels, birds’ eggs and young birds, insects, worms, carrion, and garbage—to say nothing of the contents of bird feeders, such as suet and sunflower seeds—are among the host of items that coons consume avidly. Then, of course, there is corn, particularly sweet corn. Raccoons are justly famous for raiding corn patches, and are the bane of many a gardener’s existence. A family of raccoons can utterly devastate a large patch of corn in just one night, destroying many times what they actually eat. They know when the corn is just ripening, too; they’ll pass by it night after night without paying the slightest attention until the corn is almost ready for humans to pick—then virtually annihilate the entire patch in a single evening of unbridled gluttony.

In balance with its natural habitat, as it once was, the raccoon was simply a normal predator—a valuable part of the ecosystem. Because of their extreme adaptability, omnivorous appetites, and cleverness, however, they’ve learned to take advantage of human activities. In particular, they seem to regard urban and suburban areas as their rightful domain; there they inhabit attics, crawlspaces, outbuildings, and various other man-made structures, meanwhile growing fat on garbage, to say nothing of the birdseed and suet so thoughtfully provided by humans. The result is an enormous overpopulation that spills out into rural areas and wreaks havoc on many creatures, including songbirds, ducks and geese, and frogs—to say nothing of the contents of human gardens.

Our daughter-in-law’s uncle owns a building and home-repair business, and not long ago he had an experience that vividly demonstrates the scope of the problem. One of Albert’s clients owned a home which had been vacant for some months, and called to say that there was an apparent leak in the roof; one of those ceiling lights with a concave glass disk below it was full of yellow liquid.

When Albert investigated, he found the attic full of raccoons—thirty-five, to be precise! The light fixture was full of urine that had dripped through the ceiling, and the attic was inches deep in feces. Now consider that for every instance such as this, there are dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of attics, crawlspaces, and outbuildings that harbor one, two, or perhaps as many as five or six coons. The total raccoon population of even a small city or suburb suddenly becomes staggering when viewed in this light.

Raccoons are excellent climbers and, aided by those facile front paws, their depredation on many birds has become a serious matter. One biologist told me that he has to be very careful about checking bluebird and other nesting boxes: raccoons have learned that following human tracks will often lead them to nesting boxes, which they can then rob. Unless some sort of barrier is placed around a tree or pole that holds a nesting box, a coon will climb to the box, reach in through the entry hole, and extract eggs and baby birds.

Further evidence comes from a study performed in an experimental forest in New Hampshire some years ago. Biologists located nests of various species of songbirds and then set up cameras with tripwires and flashes to catch nighttime nest robbers in the act. To no one’s great surprise, the photos showed that by far the most destructive nest robber was the raccoon.

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