Favorite habitats for the raccoon dog are river valleys, copses, boggy meadows, the area next to small bodies of water. Animals are nocturnal.
Natural habitat for the raccoon dog
The raccoon dog is native to East Asia, and originally lived in northeastern Indochina, China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Gradually, its habitat moved to Russia, to the forests of the Ussuri region, therefore, the raccoon dog is often called the Ussuri raccoon in Russia.
The raccoon dog loves water and is good at swimming, so it settles near the water. It can live not only in river valleys, but also in swampy lowlands and oxbows, near lakes and swamps, near the sea. Her good swimming skills allow her to hunt fish and small aquatic life in shallow waters. In Greece, therefore, they call her a fish-eater or a fisher-dog. In size, the raccoon dog is comparable to an ordinary dog, they give out only short legs, it is as tall as a polar fox. Very much like a striped raccoon, but there are no stripes on the tail.
The raccoon dog, despite the roughness of its fur, belongs to fur-bearing animals, breeding works are carried out on its fur to improve its quality. For this, in some countries, the raccoon dog is bred in captivity, like a fur animal. In Finland, as a result of these works, a unique fur called the Finnish raccoon has already been obtained.
Acclimatization of the raccoon dog
From 1929 to 1957, a population of more than 10 thousand heads of raccoon dogs was imported into the administrative units of the former USSR. This was done in order to improve the quality of fur by changing food and the environment. Despite the unpretentiousness and omnivorousness, raccoon dogs took root mainly in areas with the mildest winters, and then from there they settled in Sweden, Finland, Poland, Romania, Germany and the Czech Republic.
As a result of natural acclimatization, the raccoon dog is now distributed over large areas. In particular, a large number of livestock live in Ukraine. Among the game animals in Russia and Ukraine, the raccoon dog is not in the last place, since their fur is of quite high quality and has water-repellent properties. The raccoon dog in its habitat is beneficial by eating small rodents: moles, ground squirrels and mice, as well as insects: bear, May beetles, weevils, bread beetles.
The living conditions in the middle lane do not allow this animal to dig habitual burrows near the rivers, in which they usually live in their homeland. Therefore, our raccoon dogs have adapted to build something like a nest, live in the center of willow bushes or arrange nests in gullies under willow roots.
In Russia and Ukraine, winters are milder than in the homeland of these animals, and therefore often the raccoon dog does not hibernate here for the winter. The drowsy state can last for several days, during the period of snowstorms and severe frost.
