If you think that raccoons and maine coons are related in some way you’re not completely wrong. The truth is even though these animals have been known to mate with each other they cannot create offspring due to biological differences. Matter of fact raccoons are more related to bears and have only a distant relation to cats and maine coons are descendants of the norwegian forest cats and siberian cats so this would be impossible.
Why Can’t Different Species Interbreed?
The reason why that different species cannot achieve this is because of zygotic barriers. This is when their sperm and egg cells cannot combined with each other. Two animals need to have similar DNA and close to the same number of chromosomes in order to create offspring which explains why you only see hybrids of very similar animals like lions/tigers or zebra/horses and not something like cats and raccoons.
Where Did Raccoons Come From?
Raccoons originated all the way from 25 million years ago and belong to The procyonid family. They started off as something called miacids a similar mammal that was the size of a small dog and resembled something similar to a fox or a weasel until they evolved into the raccoons we see today.
Where Did Maine Coons Come From?
Maine Coons are one the oldest cat breeds in North America and is the official state cat of Maine. It is actually unknown where maine coons actually came from ancestrally but it has been speculated that they came from norwegian forest cats or siberian forest cats which came from New England settlers.
If you want to go even further than that cats themselves originated from Egypt and came from Felis sylvestris lybica which came about 11 million years ago.
Cats And Raccoons Relation
To be even more specific this is where cats and raccoons are in terms of how much they are related to each other. They are related to each other but only distantly.
Conclusion
So as you can see maine coons and racoons even though they have a similar name and appearance don’t really have much of a relation to each other based on their origins and biology and are only related very distantly.
