Discussion (14)¬

1. gabrielsthoughts says:

   Monday, 19 January 2009 at 01:27

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   cute, character development is good…but not so funny or brain teasing as usual

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2. CampSoup1988 says:

   Monday, 19 January 2009 at 06:34

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   I also find it interesting that most raccoons will almost always wash their food before they eat it!

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3. DeviaLuna says:

   Monday, 19 January 2009 at 06:56

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   CampSoup: They’re actually softening it so it’s easier to eat. Doesn’t work for all their foods, but it’s sort of like an instinct after a while. Fun fact.

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4. Novil says:

   Monday, 19 January 2009 at 10:31

   No, that’ not the reason in most cases. Have a look at the chapter about dousing in the Wikipedia article about raccoons written by me:

   Dousing

   Raccoons sample food and other objects with their front paws to visualize them and to remove unwanted parts. The tactile sensitivity of their paws is increased if this action is performed underwater, since the water softens the horny layer covering the paws. However, the behavior observed in captive raccoons in which they carry their food to a watering hole to “wash”, or douse, it before eating has not been observed in the wild. Naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–1788) believed that raccoons do not have adequate saliva production to moisten food, necessitating dousing, but this is certainly incorrect. Captive raccoons douse their food more frequently when a watering hole with a layout similar to a stream is not farther away than 3.0 m (9.8 ft). The widely accepted theory is that dousing is a vacuum activity imitating foraging at shores for aquatic foods. This is supported by the observation that such foods are doused more frequently. Cleaning dirty food does not seem to be a reason for “washing”. Experts have cast doubt on the veracity of observations of wild raccoons dousing food.

   My personal experience after watching thousands of photos and videos of raccoons is, however, that there is a certain number of wild raccoons which douse their food, too. Some of them might do it to soften very dry and hard food like old bread.

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5. Zach Glenwright says:

   Monday, 19 January 2009 at 16:19

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   I’ve been observing wild raccoons for the past few years and I’ve noticed quite a few that “douse” their food, but only when it’s already been in water (if I put some food out in a water dish, they’ll douse that, but they don’t often take things *to* the water to douse them) – I’ve also seen them make the same “dousing” motion they would be doing in the water on dry land as well, “cleaning” their food by rolling it around in their paws before they eat it. I’ve got quite a few shots of my raccoon observations on my YouTube page –

   Very cool comic by the way! I stumbled onto this site a few weeks ago while looking at the raccoon article on Wikipedia – good stuff!

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6. Novil says:

   Monday, 19 January 2009 at 16:23

   Hello taburineagle. I’ve watched many of your videos on YouTube. MoaMolly is also a regular reader of Sandra and Woo, by the way.

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7. Rabid_fox says:

   Monday, 19 January 2009 at 23:13

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   I call birth trauma metaphor.

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8. Zach Glenwright says:

   Tuesday, 20 January 2009 at 05:31

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   Ah! Very cool! Yeah, I’ve been a fan of raccoons for at least the last 14 years, it’s just within the past few that I’ve been able to videotape them myself – I feel extraordinarily lucky to be able to watch them, they just fascinate me! I’m currently working on a retrospective piece that I’m releasing eventually that will cover the whole of last year’s raccoon tapings (at *least* 100 hours of video), but right now I’m just trying to find time to edit it… so it’ll be around… sometime soon –

   MoaMolly’s vids are awesome too – they have very good studies on raccoon behavior, and I know they’ve contributed to the raccoon Wikipedia article as well. They’ve definitely inspired some of my raccoon projects!

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9. Garrett Williams says:

   Tuesday, 27 January 2009 at 10:06

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   These comments are very informative! Also, I am now subscribed to Zach’s YouTube page. Very good reference video for drawing animals.
   I’m now thinking that if I have a raccoon character, his/her favorite food will be soup.

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10. Zach Glenwright says:

    Wednesday, 28 January 2009 at 01:20

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    Raccoons definitely like “soup” – or eating things out of the water! I could see a comic strip about raccoons making soup out of interesting wild raccoon foods! I’m uploading a higher-resolution video of my raccoon family from last year as I speak here, plus I’m eventually going to upload a video of raccoons courting – that’s a first for me!

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11. Rickard says:

    Friday, 1 May 2009 at 18:48

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    Pretty funny .

    …Is Sandra with raccoon in that last strip. =D?

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12. Luio says:

    Wednesday, 3 March 2010 at 13:48

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    Wow! a girl walking along side a racoon which is walk in on two feet aswell… That’s something you don’t see quite everyday…

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13. Misty says:

    Friday, 23 April 2010 at 12:31

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    OH MY GAH SHES PREGANT WITH A RACCOON.

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14. Signlanguagemonkey says:

    Saturday, 9 July 2011 at 21:54

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    And thus we return to the status quo of funny/cute/awkward hijinks. That last strip had me worried.

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