Check out these cool facts you never knew about raccoons

Who doesn’t enjoy the antics of a furry raccoon? They are cute, smart, and even a bit naughty sometimes, especially when they are out trying to steal your food! However, there are a lot of things you may not know about raccoons. Let’s take a look at 20 interesting facts you didn’t know you needed to hear!

1. A raccoon can live for up to three years in the wild. In captivity, a raccoon can live up to twenty years.
2. Raccoons communicate by making more than fifty different noises. You’ll often hear a raccoon purr, hiss, or growl when he is competing with others for food.
3. Raccoons are usually awake at nighttime, known as being nocturnal. We often get scared to see raccoons out during the day because we’ve been conditioned to believe it must have rabies if it is out in the daylight. However, raccoons often have to scavenge for food during the day. They aren’t sick-they are just hungry!
4. You’ll find raccoons living in a number of places, such as big city parks, wooded country areas, and tropical climates. Raccoons often reside in busy areas, even cities, because they can enjoy large amounts of food found in the streets.
5. A raccoon can rotate their back feet 180 degrees, allowing them to climb head-first down a tree. Raccoons also have very sensitive front paws, which become more sensitive if placed in water!
6. Raccoons eat a large variety of food. They’ll munch on bugs, plants, and fruit. They will even snatch frogs and crayfish directly from the water for a meal.
7. Raccoons are often killed by vehicles. Disease, often spread quickly in bigger cities, also kill off more raccoons than anything else.
8. Raccoons are not naturally hunted by many animals; however, bobcats, coyotes, and cougars will attack them.
9. You can find seven different raccoon species in the world. One species, the pygmy raccoon, is endangered. Luckily, the rest are not.
10. What do you call a group of raccoons? A “gaze” or a “nursery”. Many raccoon dens contain anywhere between four and 30 raccoons at a time.
11. Raccoons weigh an average of 8-20 pounds and are generally about 16-38 inches long.
12. A female raccoon will carry her “kits” for around 63 days. They can give birth one time a year and usually have no more than seven kits at once. The mother raises the babies alone. In most cases, raccoons are born inside of a hole in a tree.
13. Raccoons have very high mammal IQ scores- higher than cats and just below monkeys. They even know how to use their front and back paws to open up bins in search of food!
14. While no one knows why raccoons have the black “mask” around their eyes, one theory says that it helps them see more clearly in the dark.
15. Raccoons don’t hibernate during the winter like other animals, but they do stay inside their dens once the weather gets too cold to hunt. They enter what is known as torpor- a state that is similar to that of hibernation and keeps them asleep in their dens during the wintertime.
16. The male raccoon will mate with a number of females throughout the year. A female raccoon will only mate with one male.
17. Raccoons are able to run fast-up to 15 miles-per-hour! They can even run this fast as they climb a tree! They can swim very quickly and even fall from high places. These abilities help them escape predators they have stolen food from- a big deal in the wild!
18. Raccoon feces often look like dog feces and will contain small pieces of undigested food. Raccoons will pick one spot to defecate in and stick to it, known as a raccoon latrine.
19. Raccoons are often dangerous and unpredictable. They can carry rabies and other terrible diseases.
20. Humans trap and kill raccoons in order to sell their fur. This fur, often made into coats, was a status symbol in the 19th and 20th centuries.