Friday, February 12, 2010

Raccoon Food?

What do raccoons eat? I need to know for a summer project!





Thanks so much!!Raccoon Food?
Most raccoons will eat anything they can get, they are opportunistic scavengers/predators. From my experience they will eat toads/frogs, baby birds and their eggs, insects of any kind except ants, rodents, fish washed up on shore, berries, corn and nuts in the wild. When rehabilitated in our facility we feed them dog food, cat food, meal worms, dead mice/rats/quail, berries and apples.Raccoon Food?
Racoons are omnivores, although they are in the same group of mammals as lions and wolves. All carnivores are capable of digesting vegetable material, especially fruit. Racoons eat anything available, but unlike bears, I don't think they can digest grass. They will eat fruits, vegetables and meat they scavenge or manage to kill themselves. Racoons are very opportunistic scavengers, which helps to explain why they can live so close to humans. They are fond of getting into garbage cans and like bears, appear to be most attracted to sweet items containing a lot of sugar. Basically Racoons eat anything people can eat.
Have fun on your summer project, but wash your hands well if you are around raccoon feces. They contain the eggs of the raccoon roundworm Baylissascaris procyonis. While the raccoon roundworm cannot complete its life cycle in the human, larval forms can migrate through the human intestine into the blood stream and thence into the eye or brain, causing blindness or encephalitis and death.
Raccoons will eat tuna fish or any other fish you leave outside for them. They will also kill rabbits and birds if they have the chance.
I live in a rural area of NY and I had an aged raccoon that used to visit me every night. This guy would come up to my front window and peer in at me every night. I would leave him a can of tuna every night which he ate every night. He would visit me every night looking for the food as, obviously it was an easy meal. It was funny how he showed up every night at about the same time and looked in the window at me.





Sadly, he passed away in my front yard about a month after our first meeting.





Raccoons will eat just about anything. They like meat, berries, nuts, seeds, and can be scavengers. Raccoons are also quite intelligent. I miss my little friend!!!!!!
They are omnivores and will eat anything, and I mean anything: fish, frogs, insects, crayfish, carcasses, turtles, eggs, berries, nuts, fruit, birds, mice, voles, rats, shrews, squirrels, mink and garbage, just to name some of its food.

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