Animals used for fur (2024)

Unlike our ancestors, we are no longer dependent on fur today. Warming garments made of alternative materials and deceptively realistic looking fake fur have long been available. Nevertheless, all over the world certain animal species are still admired - and tormented - for their particularly beautiful, dense fur. This beautiful fur becomes the fate of fur animals like minks, foxes, raccoon dogs and many other species.

Here, you will find an overview of the typical fur animals - and the sad conditions in which they have to live until their death.

When the term 'mink' is mentioned, many people do not even think of the small predator from the mustelids family, but of a fur coat. The mink is probably the most famous of all fur animals. While the European mink is strictly protected, American minks are bred as fur animals or are caught directly in the wild with brutal traps. On fur farms, American minks (Mustela vison) live in tiny wire mesh cages, which have a surface area of just a quarter of a square meter and are about 45 cm high. In addition, there is a sleeping box the size of a shoe box. Breeding animals are usually kept individually; the young animals intended for fur production usually stay together in pairs until they are killed.

As food, farm minks are given a food mash which is smeared onto the grid, they cannot live out their biting instinct this way. The very mobile animals are extremely restricted in their urge to move. Minks also have webbed feet and roam up to six kilometres in the wild, mostly in and around water. Nevertheless, on fur farms they are deprived of bathing opportunities for swimming and diving. They cannot climb, hide or interact with or avoid other animals of the same species. Studies show that 70 percent of farm minks exhibit stereotypical behaviour such as highly repetitive movements, pacing and excessive grooming or licking.

Perhaps an animals you've never heard of, and there is a reason for this: raccoon dog fur is called by many different names in the trade, often "Finnraccoon", "Russian Raccoon" or "Chinese Raccoon" or in German as raccoon, because of its visual similarity to this unrelated species. Other names are "sea fox" or "Tanuki". In fact, the raccoon dog is one of the most widespread fur animals at all.

The predators belong to the group of canine animals and are kept particularly often in China and to a lesser extent in Finland due to their supposedly low food and husbandry requirements. In unstructured wire mesh cages with a maximum surface area of one square metre and a height of 75 cm, the raccoon dog cannot move enough, nor can they live out their exploratory behaviours. the wire mesh floors can cause injuries and deformation of the paws. Due to the inadequate keeping and the proximity to conspecifics, the animals are under permanent stress. In the wild, the nocturnal omnivores prefer dense undergrowth and proximity to watercourses, where they also dive for fish. Their roaming areas are on average almost ten square kilometres in size, with the animals avoiding foreign conspecifics. Depending on the weather, the raccoon dogs hibernate in the winter, for which they use burrows. Both parents are responsible for raising the young animals.