Samuel I. Zeveloff - Raccoons: A Natural History

Three six-week-old raccoons go out on a limb. Photo by Erwin and Peggy Bauer. The Bruce Coleman Collection.

I have written this book to provide a contemporary and thorough treatment of an enormously popular and important North American animal: the raccoon. This book broadly depicts the raccoons natural historyits evolution, ecology, behavior, and conservation.

The raccoon occupies a unique place in North American culture. As the United States most economically important furbearer, the raccoon has been eagerly sought by trappers and hunters throughout much of the country, even before its founding as a nation. The history of the raccoon as an object of pursuit and as a ubiquitous denizen of so many of our landscapes has significant cultural aspects that are examined in the pages that follow.

Raccoons have held a special attraction for me since my early child-hood. I cannot recall when I first found them to be so appealing, though this event may be related to the broadcast of the Walt Disney television series about the nineteenth-century frontiersman Davy Crockett. Along with many other baby boomers of the 1950s, I eagerly participated in the coonskin cap craze that this series spawned, a fad that is discussed in , Raccoons and Humans. I recall thinking that those versions of the cap that had a leather or plastic piece on top were simply unacceptable. So my parents indulged my sensibilities and purchased the real item: a hat completely made of fur. That cap left an indelible impression. I can clearly remember the feel of its lustrous fur as well as the striped tail, which on my hat came with a metal snap for easy removal. From that point onward, I was hooked on raccoons.

I had little contact with raccoons until I began working on a masters thesis about their ecology in North Carolina. That was my only extended research experience with this species, yielding findings that are mentioned later. For my doctoral work at the University of Wyoming, I examined patterns of variation in different ecological attributes of mammalian communities throughout North America, analyses that helped me to place my raccoon research within a wider perspective. Several years ago, I organized a symposium on the evolution of the Procyonidae (the raccoon family) at the International Theriological Congress in Mexico to learn about experts views on this topic. (Theriology is the term Europeans often use in place of mammalogy, the study of mammals.) Along the way, I never lost my keen interest in and appreciation for this animal. As a zoologist, I have informally continued to monitor its presence in the areas in which I have lived since doing my fieldwork in North Carolina.

Authoring a volume on the raccoon is a logical extension of my interest in writing and editing natural history books. During the past few years, I have written or compiled several books on mammals and wilderness issues, intending for such works to contribute to our understanding of these topics. I hope that broadening the readers understanding of raccoons will also increase his or her appreciation for all organisms. As is commonly known, an ever-increasing number of Earths species face uncertain futures because of the numerous environmental changes threatening them, especially the rapid diminishing of their habitats. Ironically, despite the raccoons success, many of its close relatives are among these threatened species. As is discussed later, the raccoon is successful largely because it is a generalist, a species that has an opportunistic lifestyle; specialists, organisms with more specific needs, have far dimmer futures.

This book strives to reveal just how unusual the raccoon is. It begins with the history of the raccoons name and then addresses its origins, describing how it evolved into its present form. The following chapters examine the raccoons ecology, reproduction, social behavior, and current management issues. The book also has an in-depth discussion of the role that the raccoon has played in human affairs, including a review of its historical and contemporary cultural significance.

To allow the reader to more easily follow the text, few references are cited within it. These are mentioned in the text only when it is essential to do so. All sources are provided in a list at the end of the book. First, those employed in each chapter are listed, followed by the general sources that were used throughout the book. Similarly, I have tried to avoid placing the scientific names of animals and plants in the text. These terms are listed in the appendix.