Raccoons have the most sensitive sense of touch of any animal known other than primates.
Over two thirds of the sensory processing power of a raccoon’s brain are dedicated to its sense of touch, while the critter’s tiny hands are packed with over ten times the number of nerve endings as a human hand.
These very sensitive hands develop a thin protective barrier over time, sort of like a callous, but the layer is softened by water.
When a raccoon dips its hands into water, it can feel with perfect acuity. A raccoon will explore its food, memorizing and savoring its texture to learn about it and to be better able to identify and search for it in the future.
Source: https://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/raccoons-wash-food.htm
Source #2: post from a raccoon rescue that I can’t find now 😩
The German word for raccoon is “wash bear.”
same in finnish
Why they are so good at operating the latch on a chicken coop too lol.
They’ve got sensitive hands and engineering degrees.
I was going to say we humans seem to be the only animals that don’t poop in our water, and then I remembered all those history videos about people dumping chamber pots and the like upstream… I guess we’re all guilty!
I suspect that lots of animals are more sensible than that! e.g. cats instinctually bury their feces. Birds just poop wherever.
Cats don’t bury their feces for hygienic reasons though, they bury it to hide signs of their presence from larger predators.
