Newcastle Island is an historical island park, btw. Great field trips there growing up.

I don’t remember ‘white’ albino raccoons, but these orange ones. No black noses, as #17 said.

We saw a couple orange ones on a school trip, and one that looked much whiter (young maybe). Cool funky markings on one of the raccoons I saw: shades-of-orange stripes.

I was told there was a high incidence of albinism (sp?) because the population was limited on the island (lots of chances for recessive genes).

Right up there with the huge rabbit population and overly tame wildlife for cuteness.

“Essentially” albino, whatever that means. Not truly albino, maybe? No picture though.

http://www.newcastleisland.ca/the-wildlife.php

Wow I’m depressing. Raccoons have been my favorite animals since childhood. I had several stuffed animal versions of them and then my parents bought me a raccoon fur hat, which still disturbs me. “Our boy loves raccoons, lets get him a dead one made into a hat!”

As you can see, this raccoon has pigment in its black nose, where a true albino would have no pigment and therefore a pink nose. As the owner of white boxer dogs, I have repeatedly explained to people how my dogs aren’t albinos (as they have brown eyes, pigmented noses, etc). It is the expression of some double-recessive piebald (or “white spotting”) genes that causes this coloring. These genes, when normall expressed, are the ones that allow for some white to be present (like in a raccoon). When these genes are hyper-expressed, this is when you get a raccoon like this (or white cat, squirrel, rabbit, Dalmatian, boxer, Boston terrier, etc).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UBL_MTKHnI

Good point as well

@13

The lack of fear of people (though raccoons do tend to be a curious animal without too much fear of humans to begin with) probably corresponds with their heaviness – eating (and overeating) from trash and other human sources. Like humans, other animals will trend to obesity as their diet gets infused with overabundant junk

It certainly doesn’t need to be placed in a zoo where it will not procreate naturally if at all. I wonder how many crank calls Zoos get anyway, telling them to pick up stray dogs and cats around the neighborhood.

Hey Zoo, you need some Possum and newt and pigeon in there, all you got is them circus animals.

Actually, now that I think of it, I know of a zoo that keeps goats, in a petting farm.

Jeez. If that woman has kids I feel sorry for them.

- Ethel

Looks reasonably healthy to me. Raccoons shouldn’t be fat, but the ones most people see are ones that are living off human garbage and tend towards obesity. Wild populations are often trimmer.

We had a squirrel get trapped in an office building…animal rescue wouldn’t deal with it, but they referred us to an exterminator. The guy shows up with a cool-ass dog that was bred by Brits to go after rats. Never saw a squirrel run so fast…And the dog was RIGHT BEHIND it.

Could also be a juvenile.