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A raccoon (the rarer spelling racoon is also sometimes found) is any one of three species of nocturnal mammals which comprise the genus Procyon of the Procyonidae family. The most widespread species, the Common Raccoon (P. lotor), is often known simply as the raccoon, as the two other raccoon species in the genus are native only to the tropics and are considerably lesser-known.
Raccoons are unusual for their thumbs, which (though not opposable) enable them to open many closed containers (such as garbage cans and doors). They are omnivores with a reputation for being clever and mischievous; their intelligence and dexterity equip them to survive in a wide range of environments and are one of the few medium-to-large-sized animals that have enlarged its range since human encroachment began (another is the coyote). Raccoon hindfeet are plantigrade similar to a human's.
Although there is some variation depending on the species in question, raccoons range from 50 to 100 cm in length (including the tail) and weigh between 4.5 and 16 kg. The raccoon's tail ranges from 20 to 40 cm in length. Male raccoons are generally larger than females. A baby raccoon is called a kit[1].
There are three species of raccoon. The most widespread is the Common Raccoon, also known as the Northern Raccoon, which has a natural range of Southern Canada to Southern Mexico and has been introduced to Continental Europe. Raccoons can live in the city or in the wild, and while they are not domesticated they are on rare occasion kept as pets.
The two rarer species are the Tres Marias Raccoon (P. insularis), native to the Tres Marías islands off the Pacific Coast of Mexico, and the Crab-eating Raccoon (P. cancrivorus) of tropical Central and South America.
Some raccoons once considered separate species are now thought to be the same as or subspecies of the common raccoon, including the Barbados Raccoon (P. gloveralleni), Nassau Raccoon (P. maynardi), Guadeloupe Raccoon (P. minor), and Cozumel Island Raccoon (P. pygmaeus) (Helgen and Wilson 2005).
The word "raccoon" is derived from the Algonquian word aroughcoune, "he who scratches with his hands." Spanish-speaking colonists similarly adopted their term, mapache, from the Nahuatl word for the animal, meaning roughly "that which has hands."
The genus name, Procyon, comes from the Greek for "pre-dog"; this term is also used for the star Procyon.
Raccoons are today understood to have a relatively loose evolutionary relationship with bears which was nonetheless seen as significant by the early taxonomists; Carolus Linnaeus initially placed the Raccoon in the genus Ursus. In many languages, the raccoon is named for its characteristic dousing behavior in conjunction with that language's term for "bear": Waschbär in German, mosómedve in Hungarian, vaskebjørn in Danish and Norwegian, tvättbjörn in Swedish, wasbeer in Dutch, pesukarhu in Finnish, araiguma (洗熊) in Japanese and huànxióng (浣熊) in Chinese all mean "washing bear."
In some cases, the "washing" descriptor is applied only to the Common Raccoon species: for example, in French the common raccoon is called raton laveur or "little washing rat," while its Linnaean binomial is Procyon lotor or, roughly, "washing pre-dog." In contrast, the Crab-eating Raccoon is "little crab-catching rat" (raton crabier) and "crab-eating pre-dog" (Procyon cancrivorous) in French and Latin, respectively.