Story and photos by Susan C. Morse
13
TRACKING tips
Raccoon or Otter?
Northern Woodlands / Summer 2016
Good friend and fellow tracker Paul Rezendes once observed that there are times when a species’
tracks will convince you that you are looking at those of a different animal. So it is with raccoon
and otter tracks at the water’s edge. Here are some tips that can help sort things out.
Raccoon (Procyon lotor)
A raccoon’s stance is plantigrade,
meaning that it walks on the soles
of its feet, as opposed to digitigrade
animals like cats and dogs that
mostly walk on their toes. The flat-footed placement of a raccoon’s
walking track shows as an even
downward impression with little
emphasis on the toes or the forward
edge of the middle pad. The tracks
left by the front feet typically look
like human hands with long, finger-like grooves uniting each toe with
the palm pad. There is no separate
round carpal pad impression, such
as we see with a good front foot
otter track. A furless raccoon hind
foot registers a smooth, bear-like
track impression, heel included.
Look for a raccoon’s feces, or even
latrine sites, at the base of a den
tree or resting place, such as a log
or a large tree limb. Raccoons are
omnivores, and their scat reveals
the plasticity of their diet, including
recognizable pieces and colors of
all sorts of foods. Their excrement
is most often voided as a smooth,
even-diameter, tubular, blunt-ended
cord. Be careful and practice “safe
scat” – do not touch or smell the
droppings! A raccoon’s feces may
contain thousands of parasite eggs
from the round worm Baylisacaris
procyonis. If accidentally inhaled or
ingested, this parasite can cause
serious health problems, even death.
If the tracks are on the hood of your
car, they are definitely those of a
nosy raccoon. Otters don’t do cars.
River Otter (Lutra Canadensis)
Toe impressions and the leading
edge of an otter’s middle pad are
different than those of a raccoon
because they more deeply register
the forward inertia of the otter’s
loping gaits. Mesial webbing, the
membrane that unites the toe
digits, is clearly present in these
tracks; raccoons lack this webbing.
A feature unique to otter is the
elongated thumb-like toe that
extends outward from the base
of the middle pad. This is present
on otter hind feet only. No doubt
this toe enhances the strength and
spreadable size of the flipper-like
hind foot.
In the close-up we see a separate
round carpal pad impression, a clue
that this track is from an otter’s
front foot. The visible grooves that
unite the toe digit impressions
with the middle pad are not actual
finger impressions like we see with
raccoon tracks. Instead, they are
created by toe phalanges, bones
beneath the foot’s skin. The otter’s
relatively naked foot surface allows
these bone impressions to sometimes be seen in tracks.
An otter’s scat will almost always
contain visible evidence of its
piscivorous diet, including fish scales
and bones, and give off a funky
fish-market smell. Pinkish-orange
fragments of crayfish are also
regularly found in otter feces.
Susan C. Morse is founder and program
director of Keeping Track in Huntington,
Vermont.