Еноты: Биология, Происхождение и Названия

Genus of carnivores
the genus

Procyon is a genus of nocturnal mammals comprising three species commonly known as raccoons in the family Procyonidae. The most familiar species, the common raccoon (P. lotor), is often known simply as "the" raccoon, as the two other raccoon species in the genus are native only to the tropics and less well known. Genetic studies have shown that the closest relatives of raccoons are the ring tailed cats and cacomistles of genus Bassariscus, from which they diverged about 10 million years ago. They have readily adapted to urban environments (compare urban opossums, skunks and foxes), scavenging garbage bins and other food sources. Although there is some variation depending on species, raccoons range from in length (including the tail) and weigh between The raccoon's tail ranges from in length. Male raccoons are generally larger than females. A baby raccoon is called a kit. Raccoons can live up to 16 years in the wild, though most do not make it through their second year. A raccoon that survives past its youth will live an average of five years. Primary causes of mortality include humans (hunting, trapping, cars) and malnutrition.

The word "raccoon" is derived from the Algonquian word aroughcoune, "he who scratches with his hands". Spanish speaking colonists similarly adopted their term, mapache, from mapachtli the Nahuatl word for the animal, meaning roughly "that which has hands". The genus name, Procyon, comes from the Greek for "before the dog"; this term is also used for the star Procyon of the constellation Canis Minor. Raccoons are today understood to have a relatively loose evolutionary relationship with bears, which was nonetheless seen as significant by the early taxonomists; Carl Linnaeus initially placed the raccoon in the genus Ursus. In many languages, the raccoon is named for its characteristic dousing behavior in conjunction with that language's term for "bear": Waschbär in German, mosómedve in Hungarian, vaskebjørn in Danish and Norwegian, tvättbjörn in Swedish, wasbeer in Dutch, pesukaru in Estonian and pesukarhu in Finnish, (アライグマ) in Japanese, orsetto lavatore in Italian, (浣熊) in Chinese and (миеща мечка) in Bulgarian all mean "washing bear". One exception is Russian, where raccoon is named (енот) due to similarity between raccoon and genet furs. However, the full name of the common raccoon in Russian is also water related: it is called (енот полоскун), which means "rinsing raccoon". In some cases, the "washing" descriptor is applied only to the common raccoon species: for example, in French the common raccoon is called raton laveur or "washing rat", while its Linnaean binomial is Procyon lotor or, roughly, "washing pre dog". In contrast, the crab eating raccoon is "little crab catching rat" (raton crabier) and "crab eating pre dog" (Procyon cancrivorus) in French and Latin, respectively.