Friends and family, more like. Capitalism is probably the reason why we’ll have raccoons in Finland in a few decades; they’re already a huge problem in Germany and climate change apparently means that they’ll probably spread up north too
Idk if you can blame climate change for that one, they’re kind ubiquitous through a lot of Canada. They didn’t seem to like the deserty part of south Alberta, but they moved in with irrigation and corn production. Finnish weather is right up their alley. They’re an invasive species though, not native.
Oh yeah good point about Canadian weather. It’s can actually be colder there in winter than here (especially southern Finland), we have the Gulf Stream to keep us warm. I lived in Montreal for a while and when I moved there I was surprised at how fucking brutal the winters were compared to Helsinki, although somebody said I managed to move there just when the winters were uncommonly cold.
I remember seeing a short blurb on our public broadcaster Yle’s new site about invasive species that are spreading to northern Europe due to climate change, and I’m like 80% sure raccoons were specifically mentioned. I’ll try to dig it up and see what their source was or if raccoons even were mentioned in the first place.
Edit: found the blurb (here in case anyone’s interested, but it’s in Finnish and mainly a slideshow). It references a researcher from Natural Resources Institute Finland, and I found some quotes by other researchers from same institute saying that raccoons are “sensitive” to cold and snow but that sounds a bit… weird. I know they go into torpor when the temperature drops under -10°C, but I don’t understand how that’d stop them from spreading here. I’m no researcher though and the folks at the Natural Resources Institute aren’t dum-dums, so I’d lean towards believing them – especially considering that raccoons haven’t managed to spread here yet even though they’ve already spread into eg. Denmark and the Baltics.
Oh yeah I’m not disputing those facts at all, just saying that there’s got to be some reason trash pandas haven’t wound up here because they’ve spread pretty far and wide in central Europe, and I’d assume multiple researchers saying it’s got something to do with climate are probably correct, but I have no clue what the exact reason is since I haven’t actually read anything more rigorous than some pretty generic news articles, so who knows if they were even quoted correctly.
Maybe they’re more likely to spread to warmer areas, because who’d want to ditch continental Europe and slog through Russia to live in this frozen hellhole? Or maybe they’re fans of the Berlin punk scene?
Edit: ok I couldn’t help myself, I had to find an actual scientific article about this. I found one from the Finnish Environment Institute (unsurprisingly in Finnish, here) and here’s a quick’n’dirty translation of what it had to say:
Based on these predictions, alien species whose distribution and success are significantly limited by wintering conditions (occurrence of cold periods during the winter season) are likely to be able to establish in Finland and expand their range more slowly than alien species whose distribution limits are mainly determined by the amount of heat during the growing season. For mammals, for example, the effects of winter conditions are often mediated by two main factors: the amount and duration of snow cover (e.g. raccoon dog, raccoon, Japanese fur seal, spotted grouse) and the presence of ice cover (e.g. nutria).
So apparently the amount and duration of snow cover are what limits the expansion of the trash panda empire, ie. it’s not that it’s incredibly cold here but that winters are longer (because axial tilt) and therefore there’s snow on the ground longer.
That doesn’t sound quite right for raccoons. It could definitely be indirectly true. It’s all about food supply for raccoons, they have the fur and body fat for extreme cold. Long winter/less food. Like I mentioned, they avoided south east Alberta before widespread corn production.
Oh yeah I’ve read they hunt them a lot in eg. Germany. Considering that they’re an invasive pest, even though they’re my favorite animal and I don’t eat all that much meat nowadays I’d probably be down to try some trash panda steak. Well, assuming the trash panda wasn’t living in a city – I think a diet of garbage might not make for the tastiest meat.
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