In November, we set our clocks an hour forward and officially say good-bye to an hour of daylight every evening. From now until spring, we're going to be spending most of our non-working hours in the dark: commuting home from the office when it's dark, making dinner when it's dark, meeting friends when it's dark, getting the kids to and from a million stupid activities in the dark. Ken Jennings, of Jeopardy! fame, is going to brighten this gloomy month with the light of knowledge, debunking some long-held myths about other nocturnal urban wanderers: the birds and critters you might see on a streetlit November night.
The Debunker: Do Raccoons Wash Their Food?
Raccoons are so associated with food-washing that their species name, Procyon lotor, literally means "the washing pre-dog." The French call the little guy le raton laveur--"the rat who washes." The popular myth is that of an animal who won't take a bite without thoroughly dunking its meal--which, if you ask me, is pretty snooty for an animal that gets a lot of its meals from garbage cans.
Raccoons have unusually dexterous thumbed hands that allow them to forage for (and fiddle with!) their food more effectively than most animals. That's what this "dousing" activity actually is: raccoons hunting for underwater morsels, and then rubbing at them before eating, probably to remove the parts they don't want. (Stems and bones and whatnot. Raccoons may eat your garbage, but they're not monsters.) It's possible that they like to keep food underwater to rub at it in order to improve sensitivity in their adorable little paws, by softening the skin.
Only in captivity have raccoons have ever been observed bringing their food to water, as if washing it. This behavior led early naturalists to conclude that raccoons were poor saliva-challenged creatures who needed to wet their food to get it down. But since raccoons don't wash in the wild, we now assume that captive raccoons are just instinctively duplicating the fishing motions of their forest- and backyard-dwelling brethren. Bottom line: unless a raccoon is talking to you in Bradley Cooper's voice, it's not smart enough to know anything about proper food hygiene.
Quick Quiz: In the Beatles song "Rocky Raccoon," what's the only thing Rocky finds when he checks into his room above the local saloon?
Ken Jennings is the author of six books, most recently his Junior Genius Guides, Because I Said So!, and Maphead. He's also the proud owner of an underwhelming Bag o' Crap. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.