Species
There are three species of raccoon. The common raccoon, also known as the northern raccoon, has a natural range from southern Canada to Panama, and has been introduced to continental Europe. Raccoons can live in the city or in the wild, and while they are not domesticated, they are on rare occasion kept as pets.
The tropical crab-eating Raccoon (P. cancrivorus) ranges from Costa Rica through most areas of South America east of the Andes down to northern Argentina and Uruguay.
A much rarer species, the Cozumel Island raccoon (P. pygmaeus), is native to Cozumel Island off the Atlantic coast of Yucatan.
Some raccoons once considered separate species are now thought to be the same as or subspecies of the common raccoon, including the Barbados raccoon (P. gloveralleni), Nassau raccoon (P. maynardi), Guadeloupe raccoon (P. minor), and Tres Marias raccoon (P. insularis) (Helgen and Wilson 2005). Procyon brachyurus Wiegmann, 1837 was described from captive specimens; its identity is undeterminable as the remains of the two animals assigned to this taxon cannot be located anymore and may have been lost.
Read more about this topic: Procyon (genus)
Famous quotes containing the word species:
“Our species successfully raised children for tens of thousands of years before the first person wrote down the word “psychology.” The fundamental skills needed to be a parent are within us. All we’re really doing is fine-tuning a process that’s already remarkably successful.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“If there is a species which is more maltreated than children, then it must be their toys, which they handle in an incredibly off-hand manner.... Toys are thus the end point in that long chain in which all the conditions of despotic high-handedness are in play which enchain beings one to another, from one species to another—cruel divinities to their sacrificial victims, from masters to slaves, from adults to children, and from children to their objects.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“The question that will decide our destiny is not whether we shall expand into space. It is: shall we be one species or a million? A million species will not exhaust the ecological niches that are awaiting the arrival of intelligence.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)