Raccoon fun fact:
When Europeans went to America the first time they called raccoons with the spanish name for dog, perro IIRC.
So I guess they thought they were just weird doggos.

More raccoon fun fact about that era: They then thought it would be a banger idea to bring bring them to Europe to breed and train them so they could sell raccoon pets.
However the raccoons, upon arriving in Europe, went like "Aight thanks for the ride bros, we're out".
They escaped, went on their own way and that's how we started having wild raccoons in some places in Europe.