{"id":541358,"date":"2026-04-20T17:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T17:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/541358\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T17:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T17:00:08","slug":"stowaway-raccoon-put-down-after-arriving-at-southampton-port","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/541358\/","title":{"rendered":"Stowaway raccoon put down after arriving at Southampton port"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It is not known where the raccoon first boarded the ship, but it is thought to have made the journey unnoticed among cargo.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Staff reportedly spotted the animal shortly after the vessel arrived in Southampton.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wild raccoons are native of North America and are not generally domesticated. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Some are found living in the wild in central Europe after escaping from fur farms in Germany in the 1930s. It is estimated <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/mammals\/raccoons-in-germany\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">as many as 1.5 million now live in Germany, external<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">While they appear harmless or even playful, they can be unpredictable and carry serious diseases.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In March, a red fox <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cly2xynjzdzo\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">made a transatlantic journey in the opposite direction<\/a>, sneaking onto a cargo ship in Southampton and ending up in New York.  It was put into the care of New York&#8217;s Bronx Zoo. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A spokesperson for the RSPCA animal welfare charity said that despite some reports, it &#8220;had no dealings with the raccoon&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is not known where the raccoon first boarded the ship, but it is thought to have made&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-541358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}