April, 1909.] 
On Hibernation in the Raccoon. 
495 
ON HIBERNATION IN THE RACCOON. 
S. R. Williams. 
Some years ago, on the third of January, a young raccoon 
(Procyon lotor Storr) was taken during his winter sleep while a 
hollow sugar tree was being 
cut down in Butler County 
in Southwestern Ohio. 
It is certain that the ani¬ 
mal was really hibernating as 
the weather for more than 
two weeks before had been 
very cold, reaching twenty 
degrees below zero Fahren¬ 
heit. An opossum was found 
in the same woods that day 
frozen stiff. In the latitude of 
Ohio the Raccoon is said to 
hibernate for at least three 
months, even four when the 
winter is severe. 
The animal had a few 
worn sticks in its stomach, 
together with a slight amount 
of liquid very like mucus. 
There was nothing at all in 
the small intestine, the walls 
of which very were thin and 
thrown in longitudinal folds 
so that the lumen of the intes¬ 
tine was almost obliterated. 
The inside of the intestine was 
clean and slightly pinkish in 
color. There was a small 
amount of dry fecal matter 
in the posterior end of the 
large intestine. 
The major part of the fat 
on the body was definitely lo¬ 
calized. The naked body without the skin weighed 3700 grams 
(see figure photographed from the front and right side). A sheet 
of fat was taken from the rump and upper hind quarters, which 
weighed 410 grams, or one-ninth of the total weight. This was 
more than half an inch in thickness just in front of the base of 
the tail and shows plainly on the hind quarters in the photograph. 
The mesentery, which is shown spread out, had on it 84 grams of 
