While raccoons are a common sight for everyone but they are nowhere common and there’s always more to the dexterous animals. These furry animals are so intelligent that can open latches, turn doorknobs, open lids, and remember it for years. As much as they are dexterous, raccoons are also proficient in many things like climbing, jumping, and swimming, but how high can raccoons jump from the ground & from a height and how far. Here’s the answer.
The Concise Answer…
Although raccoons can only jump 4 feet high from the ground, they can fearlessly jump from a whopping 40 meters from a tree or building or attitude without being harmed. Raccoons are slow and lazy animals that have short legs with their front paws even shorter. Gaining fat for the winter makes them heavy and slow so they can’t jump and leap high.
Despite the fact that squirrels have also small legs and front paws very similar to them, raccoon’s body isn’t structured for running fast or jumping high. Instead, they are good climbers and reach everywhere by climbing. They mightn’t be able to climb the fence of your house, but they can probably climb it or come from the walls climbing. They also show their babies how to do it, here’s where and when do raccoons have babies.
The raccoon doesn’t have many natural predators so they do not really need to run or jump despite the fact that they can’t jump very high from ground. The same is with hunting, raccoons won’t bother running after prey, instead, they will trick or hunt when the prey is in approach or in the nest like hunting chickens and hunting rabbits.
What’s more surprising is that they seem to wash their food but actually, raccoons wet their food to determine what the food is despite they check initially with their sensitive paws. Similar to dogs that smell, raccoons recognize and come to know about the food or thing with their sensitive paws within the water. In the water, their paw becomes more sensitive and would easily recognize the food or item. They also wash their food in order to moisten and soften it which becomes easier to eat and digest and raccoons would wash their food whenever water is available.
They are smarter than many domestic and wild animals like cats, dogs, rabbits, and chickens and can make over 50 sounds that carry lots of information about the predator’s color, speed, the level of threat, and the predator itself like what is it including humans. From the dense forests to the crowded cities, raccoons adapt and live anywhere in the world. Due to the wide range of diets they have, they could eat literally anything that makes them good adapters and could adapt and survive almost anywhere.
How High Can Raccoons Jump From Height, A Tree or Building?
Despite their intelligence, raccoons have sharp eyesight and a powerful sense of smell that helps them see and find food at night. Not only that but raccoons can also swim, jump, climb, fight and run incredibly fast at the 24 km/h. They can jump or fall from a height of 131 feet (40 meters) without being harmed but how high can raccoons jump from the ground, how far. However, dolphins can also jump upto 20 feet high, here’s why do dolphins jump out of water?
How High Can Raccoons Jump From Ground?
Despite raccoons can run and climb at an incredible speed of 15 miles per hour (not for so long), they can’t jump very high from ground and can only jump 4 feet high from the ground, but they are very good at jumping from a height or better say falling from a building or a tree. They don’t have hidden wings or tools, and they do it without any wings or equipment. They do it fearlessly that most animals won’t. Their only concern is of the land that how hard it is. They have been seen mostly fall off on the sand, yard, grass, forest but not on concrete. That means, they know and won’t fall off on the concrete or tile which is hard.
When/Why Do Raccoons Jump From Ground?
As raccoons are extremely good climbers, they aren’t good jumpers. They climb anywhere instead of jumping even if they could. For example, if they are to pass a house fence that is 2 or 3 feet high, despite they can they won’t bother jumping over it, instead, they will climb with their paws.
Sometimes raccoon comes into our house and one night, when I was out for seeing the chickens, I saw the raccoon come near to the fence and easily climbed over with its paws just like a human. And while raccoons are nocturnal, they are awake at night hunting or most likely finding holes or penetrating into your chicken’s coop. It took 9 months for them to crack to enter into the chicken’s home. If you’re curious whether raccoons eat rabbits or not, here’s do raccoons eat rabbits.
When/Why Do They Jump/Fall Off From Height?
Like raccoons climbs many stories, they also know coming down, so do they jump and fall off from there, how do they come down? Here’s how.
Though raccoons, climb many stories, jumping off from height isn’t what raccoons would normally do for coming down. Despite they are fearless and mightn’t injure, they wouldn’t jump or fall off from a height but only escaping from people and escaping from predators in the wild. They also jump or fall off from height in a hurry like stealing, hunting, attacking, bitting, frightened, and sometimes, they climb up many stories but with no way of coming down, they will simply fall off. But when they are on land, they will rather climb up on a tree or building for escaping from a predator. As a result, raccoons will only jump or fall off as a last resort and only in certain situations but other than those situations, they would rather come down head front instead of jumping/falling off.
How Far Can Raccoons Jump?
With the impressive jump, raccoons also pass some distance. Raccoons could jump upto 5 feet far jumping from the ground while raccoons could jump upto 10 feet far from height. Their paw and body structure isn’t able to pass more distance than that and that also puts the life at risk and can be wounded.
Do Raccoons Get Injured?
They even jump or fall off on a person hitting him and they jump and fall off on everyone, including humans and animals for beating, biting, but also jumps and falls off for hunting or landing off of a height. The impressive part is, they won’t be injured or wounded jumping from those heights. Their fur might help a little bit due to its density but it doesn’t mostly protect them from injury. But that doesn’t mean they won’t be injured anytime jumping/falling from anywhere.
They can easily be wounded if they fall, or jump on hard surfaces, or a wrong attempt will probably injure or may even break their legs. More importantly, they are heavier than cats, and the heavier you are the more likely you are injured jumping from height and with the raccoon’s weight which is 6 – 9 Kg (that is heavier than cats), they fall off more badly than cats. That’s why they only jump or fall off only in certain situations.
How Raccoons Land on The Ground Jumping From Height Without Being Wounded? The Surprising Landing
Raccoons are not only good jumpers (falling off of height) but are also good at landing. They jump/fall off from height and land on the ground on their feet perfectly. The way they do it is very simple but not so simple for us. Similar to cats, raccoons extend their legs coming down and turns themselves in front of their feet however they would be in the air. In simple words, they would do backflip or frontflip to turn himself to be on their front so they could land on their feet. Here’s how they do it.
First, he twists himself on his front. Next, he extends his front legs to the maximum and finally near to the ground, it first lands his front paws and then the back legs, landing all his body informally that will reduce the chances of injury and that’s what it makes a successful landing. Interestingly, raccoons always use this trick so they never fall on his back.
How Do Raccoons Get Into Your House? Do They Jump or Climb? & How to Prevent It?
While raccoons can’t really jump higher than 4 feet, how do they come into your house despite the fence? Well, the answer is, they climb.
Like I said, raccoons are very good jumpers but they prefer climbing over jumping. With their nimble paws and tight grip, they are more likely to climb anywhere than to jump, so if you see a raccoon in your house, you should probably know that they’ve climbed up despite they could also jump over the fence. There’s nowhere in your house they can’t climb so there’s no way to entirely block it from coming. You might full and high up a fence or maybe put some thorns or whatever, but they will always come. If they didn’t come from the fence, which they can, they will probably come from walls or your neighbor’s house. But that doesn’t mean you can’t stop them, you can probably get rid of raccoons with these ways.
Summary
If you’ve seen the raccoon jumping off from the 9th-floor video, you may be completely surprised how did they do it. Raccoons are very good jumpers from height just like climbing, but they aren’t good at jumping from the ground. Raccoons can only jump 4 feet high and 5 feet far from the ground, but jump/falling from a height they can jump 40 or more feet high and 10 feet far depending on the height. But that doesn’t how raccoons would normally come down from a height. Meaning they would only jump from height in certain situations mostly escaping, but also attacking, bitting, hunting, and a few more. Typically, raccoons come down from height coming down head-first like they climb and won’t jump/fall off from stories or floors because it can injure them.
While raccoons may seem adorable or funny, they are pretty nuisance critters. They eat pet food, pets itself, and do lots of destruction to the house. Raccoons come into the house mostly from walls and despite you might have full-fenced or high-up fenced, they will still come by climbing regardless of the fence. That’s all to there it is.
