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Raccoon dog corpse on highway

 

 

A common sight since some weeks on our highways. The victims of traffic are mostly young animals born this spring. The population of raccoon dogs is quite large and the young ones are  looking for unoccupied territory for themselves since the territory of the adults cannot feed the whole family from the spring – so it is every year.

 

That raccoon dogs are so frequently killed on roads has to do with their behaviour. When a threat appears a raccoon dog acts dead, freezing in place without moving. Certainly such a lying animal may deceive some larger predator or a stray dog but the same behaviour in the light of car headlights means suicide. So it is, and drivers cannot be blamed.

 

Why do raccoon dog corpses remain lying about on roads? Early morning road users do not very often see corpses of animals or birds because they disappear from the roads very rapidly. So do raccoon corpses, when we see the eyes of fox cubs gleaming in the car headlights: they move there in the hope of easy prey. But even in daytime we will not see the roadside sanitary forces – crows or magpies – busy at raccoon dog corpses.

 

For humans dead raccoon dogs smell foully but birds will not pay attention to that. Possibly the thick skin of raccoon dogs hampers their activities at the corpse, and makes feeding on it rather complicated, and a waste of energy for the birds.

 

The natural enemies of raccoon dogs, wolf and lynx, will not go on highways.