Raccoon-fox Hybrids

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EUGENE M. MCCARTHY, PHD GENETICS, ΦΒΚ

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A diligent scholar is like a bee who takes honey from many different flowers and stores it in his hive.

—John Amos Comenius

Constantine Samuel Rafinesque
1783-1840

Red Fox

Red Fox Vulpes vulpes

raccoon

Northern Raccoon
Procyon lotor

Note: The North American Red Fox, also known as the Silver Fox, was long treated as a separate species (Vulpes fulva) from the European Red Fox, to which the epithet Vulpes vulpes was formerly restricted. But most authorities have lumped it with V. vulpes in recent years.

In an article on hybrids, the early American naturalist Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1821, p. 113; see also Rafinesque 1820, p. 86) wrote (in translation) that

The aboriginal hunters of North America believe that the raccoon (Procyon lotor to naturalists) can breed with the red fox…I have seen a complete skin of the product of this cross. It resembles the raccoon much more than the fox, having the head, teeth, feet, and so forth of the former, but the neck, size, and color of a black-tailed red fox. The black mask, so prominent in the raccoon, was missing, having been replaced by a mere faint tint of shading. The black tail rings [of the raccoon] were also absent. It is, thus, probable that this animal, which was fully adult, had been the product of a union between a raccoon and fox, both wild animals, differing in genus, family, and order. Yet, one could suppose perhaps that this specimen was simply a variety of raccoon, if the testimony of the aboriginal people, who know so well the habits of the animals of the forest, did not contradict that opinion. [Original French.]

In addition, news reports exist describing such animals:

The Decorah Public Opinion (Decorah, Ia., Dec. 27, 1916, p. 3. col. 2; ||57ff869x) said, "Tod Detrick and W ilbur Conner of Lowell killed a freak coon. The animal was almost white and had a head like a fox."

The Hattiesburg News (Hattiesburg, Miss., Sep. 25, 1908, p. 8, col. 4; ||5n9xuee7) said,

FREAK COLORED COON CAPTURED A yellow coon of the four legs kind has been added to the coon collection at the water works plant. The yellow fellow, the first of the kind ever seen here, was brought in this morning from the sixteenth section and a large number of men have viewed it with curiosity. Some pronounce it a cross between a fox and a coon, while others say it is merely a mulatto coon. Its color is its distinguishing characteristic, being totally different from the customary color of coons.

A similar composite, a dog-raccoon, was reported in the Chariton Courier (Keytesville, Mo., Mar. 25, 1904, p. 3, col. 4; ||fptt57h4) said

John Sims, a well-known trapper and fisherman from near Graham's mill, was in Chillicothe Tuesday and while there he exhibited a curiosity in the way of an animal freak of nature. The animal was the size of a two-months-old setter pup. It had the head and body of a dog, but its body was covered with fur instead of hair. It had feet like a raccoon and chattered like a coon. The freak was caught near Mr. Sims' home. He intends keeping it for his children to raise.

Another animal, which, from its description, may have been a raccoon-fox hybrid (or a raccoon-canid cross of some other kind), was shot in Cloverdale, Indiana, as reported in the Greencastle, Indiana, Daily Banner (Nov. 14, 1931, p. 1, col. 4; ||4au8mms4).

Raccoons belong to Family Procyonidae of Order Carnivora. Dogs, foxes and wolves belong to that same order but to Family Canidae. The red fox and the raccoon have similar chromosome counts (2n=34 and 2n=38, respectively).

The video below shows a male raccoon mating with a fox:

The existence of raccoon-fox hybrids is made more plausible by the known existence of an extant raccoon-canid intermediate, the raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides). Raccoon dogs look like raccoons, but are classified in Canidae.

* Indeed, the suffix -oides in procyonoides means "animals of the type indicated by the stem or prefix," which in this case is procyon, which refers to raccoons. So, procyonoides means "animals of the raccoon type."

A pair of raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides). Image: Wikimedia.

Raccoon dogs (see picture above) are native to the Far East and have become established also in Europe, where they are introduced. But their natural occurrence in the New World is unknown. So Rafinesque’s specimen cannot be explained away simply as an example of Nyctereutes, even though raccoon-dogs, just from their appearance, seem like plausible candidates for raccoon-fox hybrids.

Bartoszewicz (2011), an expert on raccoon dogs, says the raccoon (P. lotor)

looks very much like the raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides): The masked face, greyish fur and size are similar in both species. P. lotor’s head is wide with big eyes and pointed muzzle. One of the most distinguishing features of the raccoon is its black or almost black mask that fully surrounds the eye region, reaching from the cheeks across the eyes and muzzle, and extending down the muzzle and up to the forehead.

Nyctereutes may well represent a stabilized derivative of prehistoric raccoon-canid hybridization, as it's known that procyonids existed in the Old World up until at least the Pliocene. Fossil evidence indicates that the raccoon family (Procyonidae) originated in Eurasia during the late Oligocene or early Miocene, about 25 million years ago. They are now extinct in the Old World. Possibly, they were replaced there by Nyctereutes.

According to Nowak (1999), in the northern, colder regions of their ranges both raccoons and raccoon dogs spend weeks or months sleeping in their dens, but both wake on warm days to forage and return to their dens to sleep when temperatures drop again. Nowak (1999, p. 652) also notes that “Nyctereutes is the canid that hibernates.” No other canid enters a state of winter torpor. So this seems to be another trait, beyond their striking similarity in general appearance, that connects raccoon dogs with raccoons.

The taxonomic position of Nyctereutes is unclear. Frechkop (1959) placed the genus with the procyonids, but Van Gelder (1978) recognized it as a distinctive canid genus [i.e., assigned it to Family Canidae]. Its phylogenetic relationships within the Canidae are not well-resolved. It shows no close affinities with other canid genera.

* This lack of affinity was confirmed in an analysis of 36 canid species using numerical methods and 90 morphological and behavioral characters (Clutton-Brock et al., 1976). On two-dimensional plots and centroid-linkage dendrograms, the raccoon dog was always an outsider, and exhibited a similarity value of < 75 with Canis, Vulpes, and Dusicyon.

If you're interested in this topic you may want to read about a fox x raccoon dog hybrid captured in the UK in 2012.

Most hybrids reported by Rafinesque were rather mundane, but he did describe one other rather unusual cross.

A related cross >>

Raccoon-cat hybrids >>

Table of contents >>

Bibliography >>

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