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Hoo Hoo Hoo; Cute Pooch: The Japanese Raccoon Dog (Wikipedia)

The world we inhabit is, to a great degree, a creation of human minds; and predictably, with a few exceptions (Klimt, Sargent; Strauss, Herrmann; Pierre Franey; Furst, Fowles and Flaubert; and probably all of those each of us hold dear), the world is one bloody mess and I'm a little tired, in these 'holiday' times, of commenting about it.

However, there is also the world that is not confabulated by humans.

I present for your edification, (we don't need your approval; we're here, we're Canine; get used to it) a Dog -- the Japanese Raccoon Dog, native only to Japan and so (fortunately) protected and not on anybody's endangered species list -- though, when you consider what humans have been up to, we're all endangered species; don't you think?

The Japanese raccoon dog, also known as tanuki (狸 or タヌキ) in Japanese, is conventionally considered as two subspecies of the raccoon dog, hondo-tanuki (Nyctereutes procyonoides viverrinus), and ezo-tanuki (Nyctereutes procyonoides albus).

Their common Japanese name is often mistakenly translated into English as "badger" or "raccoon". Despite these mistranslations, the tanuki is not related to raccoons or badgers; the "raccoon-dog" is part of the evolutionary family that includes foxes, wolves, and dogs.

There is some debate in the scientific community regarding speciation between the other subspecies of raccoon dog and the Japanese subspecies in that due to chromosome, behavioral and weight differences, the Japanese raccoon dog should be considered a separate species from the other subspecies.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature Canid Group's Canid Biology and Conservation Conference in September 2001 rejected the classification of the Japanese raccoon dog as a separate species, but its status is still disputed, based on its elastic genome.

And, the Raccoon Dog has it's own Facebook page, Dude!

Awesome Pooch. Happy Holidays.

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