In Brief

3 July 2013

Invasion of the sleepy raccoon dogs

THE best of times can follow the worst of times. An analysis of raccoon dog DNA shows that the canid species has thrived after surviving hardship during the last ice age.

Raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides) are found across large parts of Eurasia – largely because fur lovers in the former Soviet Union introduced them to countries near its western borders in the 20th century.

Some 20,000 years ago, it was a different story: Earth was in the grip of the last ice age, and raccoon dogs were stuck in a small area of east Asia.

To work out how the raccoon dogs made it through the ice age, Mi-Sook Min of Seoul National University in South Korea and colleagues examined their genes. They found that animals from Korea, Russia, China and Vietnam were all genetically similar but distinct from Japanese raccoon dogs.


That suggests the animals were holed up in two ice-age refugia: one in Japan and one probably on the Korean peninsula. Since then, the Japanese raccoon dogs have largely stayed where they are, but the Korean animals have spread widely, with a little help from their Soviet friends (Journal of Zoology,

More on these topics: