The Huffington Post reports:
A routine call to Brecon in mid Wales saw an RSPCA Inspector called to inspect an animal that defied description.
The animal appeared to have the face of a raccoon, with dog-like attributes including long canine teeth and a shortish tail.
However the strange sounding animal was not a bizarre hybrid, but was actually a racoon dog [actually a species], a breed native to East Asia.
***
[T]he RSPCA believe these two dogs had merely escaped from their owner.
RSPCA Inspector Danielle Baber said:
“An RSPCA officer’s life is never dull, but occasionally we come across highly unusual creatures.”This handsome raccoon dog and his partner must have strayed from their owner in the Boughrood area and we’d like to hear from them immediately.”
Raccoon dogs have, of course, taken over much of Central and Northern Europe. They are a nasty invasive species, killing lots of ground nesting birds and small mammals.
They were introduced into various parts of the Soviet Union from the Russian Far East. They wound up thriving in parts of European Russia, and their range expanded to the West into Eastern Europe, Finland, and even as far west as Germany.
They obviously haven’t colonized the island of Great Britain, and if the behavior of these two raccoon dogs is any key, they are nothing more than escaped– or possibly dumped– pets.
Well, this is quite interesting as I read the following not too long ago. It seems this information likely was correct?
http://www.humanesociety.org/news/press_releases/2010/12/neiman_marcus_fur_labeling_investigation_123010.html
Lets hope this was an isolated escape or dump and not part of some poorly-conceived plan to develop of fur industry or some such. These animals would have a nasty impact on GB’s ecosystem.
The fur industry is illegal in the UK. But raccoon dogs are relatively easy to buy as pets.
Elizabeth
Why do people feel the need to keep wild animals as pets? There are plenty of domestic animals to choose from.
That’s actually a fairly commonly kept one in parts of Europe– for some odd reason.
http://www.wasbeerhonden.nl/Pets.html
An excellent example of convergent evolution. I knew that they filled the same ecological niche as the raccoon does in N. America, but the detailed description really brings that home.
Based on that description, I too am nonplussed as to why they would be desirable as pets. They’re not really dogs in the sense we know dogs and they apparently are not particularly social animals, thus unlikely to ever develop into a true pet.
On the other hand, lots of people keep raccoons as pets, too. They don’t make very good pets, either, at least not as adults. But that doesn’t stop people from keeping them. In some states you can even legally buy them in pet stores, in several colors, yet.
I think I’ll pass on raccoons as pets–they just don’t do it for me. While I enjoy observing them in their habitat, I have no desire to get up close w/ one. Dogs suit me just fine.
Speaking of pet ‘coons reminds me of something that happened in a veterinary clinic where I used to work. A client had brought in a pet male raccoon, six or eight months old, to be neutered and declawed. The vet didn’t know anything about raccoons and had just assumed that they could be declawed like cats. As everyone here probably knows, raccoons’ claws are much more like those of dogs. Declawing cats is a simple (though cruel and abhorrent) procedure, but there’s no way to declaw a dog – or a raccoon – without really crippling it. The vet decided to try it anyway. He neutered the coon, then got two claws removed. After about an hour of surgery, he decided that he would be unable to complete the procedure; it just was not feasible & would have entailed a terribly painful recovery for the raccoon. They put the coon into a top cage in the dog ward, called the owners to let them know they could pick him up the next day, and everyone went home.
When we opened the door the next morning, there were about two dozen dogs running around loose in the hospital. The cages were the standard stainless steel type with gravity latches. That raccoon had opened its own cage, then opened every cage in the dog ward. The only dogs still confined were two or three in the top row of cages who had been afraid to jump down to the floor. There were little bloody “handprints” all over the place, but that raccoon was nowhere to be found. The freed dogs had “treed” him BEHIND the bank of cages – three cages high and about twenty feet long. We had to reschedule all the surgeries and close the hospital for two days in order to dismantle the bank of cages and rescue the raccoon. Thankfully, the friendly little fellow wasn’t injured, except for having chewed the stitches out of his toes, and we retrieved him without incident.
Congrats, UK, for the new enter for your “small beasts” -serie !
I believe it’s gonna be a success !
I know that you already have 250 000 badgers, and 258 000 foxes on your quite little isles (adults).
And we all know you are such animal lovers you don’t want to kill any of them.
So let them spread out, tho we’ve heard that you are also having many problems with them, some even serious.
The numbers of your small beasts are huge – I think not even Russia has got that many badgers. Amazing numbers.
There was a time you may not have been so animal lover, you jacks and jills. Then you killed the king dog, who kept all those wires in his hands. And when he was gone, you thought the problems are solved. Well, are they?
Pom poko!
Some months ago our adult grand daughter had to swerve to avoid what – from her description – was almost certainly a racoon-like dog on a narrow country road near here in Buckinghamshire.
As ‘giraffe’ implies we do indeed have quite a lot of european badgers in the British Isles, rather more than in any other european country we are told – and they are strictly protected. In fact it is a crime to “interfere” with a badger sett, so I don’t know if I was entirely legal when I dragged my wheaten terrier out when she got slightly stuck some years ago.
Unfortunately badgers are considered responsible for the spread of bovine TB in British cattle and experimental culls in certain areas of England are being established as we speak. The badgers are going to be shot by marksmen as they leave their setts to forage at night (mainly for worms, incidentally). However,it is estimated that this programme is only likely to reduce disease in our cattle by around 16%, at huge cost, and some ‘experts’ believe that culling selectively will more likely increase the spread of disease, not reduce it, as escapees run off and join other colonies. Personally, I hope the proposed vaccination alternative works sufficiently. We Brits love our badgers and as islands cut off from Europe by the sea ten thousand years ago we don’t have quite the variety of species found on the mainland, of course.
By the way,’giraffe’, we are not that “little”, plus we have thousands of miles of coastline which we can walk around completely if we have the time and energy…