Unhealthy human diet puts raccoons at risk
Raccoons are clever and cunning, and have quickly learned that where there are people there is a constant and reliable supply of food – and they don’t even have to work hard to get their paws on some grub. Unfortunately, just like so many people, raccoons are clueless about what their fast food diet is doing to them. But unlike people, there is no way to educate the raccoons or make them aware of the dangers of what they are putting in their bodies. This means that it is up to us to look after our environment, inside and out. One of the greatest dangers for raccoons eating out of compost and garbage bins is high blood sugar. Believe it or not, raccoons also suffer from this so-called human disease. A study by Ontario researchers have found that raccoons who predominantly eat human food are significantly heavier and have higher blood glucose levels than those that have a more natural and appropriate diet. According to Albrecht Schulte-Hostedde, a professor in evolutionary ecology at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario and lead author of the study, when researchers compared data from three groups of raccoons with different degrees of access to human food, the urban raccoons’ blood glucose was more than double that of their rural cousins.
It is hardly surprising that raccoons who indulge in our leftovers, and have a high fat, high salt diet, are beginning to look like their urban dwelling human counterparts with similar eating habits, and appear to be suffering from the same health problems, most notably diabetes, obesity and metabolic syndrome (a cluster of conditions including increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol).
