Female Japanese Raccoon Dog Digs out the Helper’s Cached Food and Eats It in the Next Morning

The minimum family of three Japanese raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes viverrinus, family Canidae) returned to the snowy den site in the defoliated secondary forest at dawn. The mum sniffed out the cached food under the frozen snow, which had been hidden by the visually-impaired daughter (night-blind helper?) the day before. And hungry mum began to eat it on the spot. Meanwhile, the dad in rut licked and sniffed at the rear end of the female partner to check if she was in heat. As you can see, the stimulated female seemed to become sexually aroused, because her tail gradually rose high as she kept feeding on the cached food (fish?). And the male repeated allo-marking onto the fur of the female partner with his urine. Although the poor helper was robbed of the precious food by parent, she didn’t protest nor try to take it back. She dejectedly sat down beside the den entrance and just watched the parents feasting and flirting. (Can she see in the daylight in spite of the bilateral loss of tapetal reflection?) Eventually, the trio left the winter den site one after another. Captured from two angles with my new trailcams shortly before sunrise (around 5:50 AM) of mid-March 2025 in Japan. The air temperature was -4 degrees Celsius. The sunrise time was 5:54 AM. For a full story (text in Japanese); https://sigma-nature-vlog.blogspot.com/2026/06/blog-post_24.html