This highly intelligent mammal has a rounded head with short nose, small ears, and a sturdy body with minimum-length, thick, grayish brown fur.
Females produce one litter a year, numbering from one to six kits and averaging four or five.
Over most of the U.S. and southern Canada, except in the western mountain ranges, raccoons are found in many different habitats, especially near streams, ponds, and marshes in mature wooded areas. Their range is expanding further north into Canada, because of habitat lost to agriculture and the apparent warming of northern weather. As humans have moved into raccoon habitat, this mammal has proven more adaptable than most. For nesting sites it prefers warm, dry, dark, easily protected areas. In the wild, it dens in tree hollows, hollow logs, or sometimes rocky caverns.