These little guys are under threat (Picture: REX/Shutterstock)

They might look like the latest adorable animal to be destined for internet immortality, but the raccoon dogs are facing slaughter after they became a serious threat to other animals in Sweden.

They are known to feed on amphibians and ground-nesting birds and it’s this diet that is causing an ‘ecological disaster’, according to Per-Arne Ahlen, who is leading the project to eradicate the animals.

But it’s almost a case of dog eats dog, with the project enlisting the help of trained raccoon dogs to kill their feral counterparts.

The BBC reports they are taking a select group of raccoon dogs known as ‘Judas animals’, before sterilising them and releasing them back into the wild.


Raccoon dogs are known to mate with a single partner for a life – and the Judas dogs will go searching for a new partner when they’re released.



As soon as one stops moving, one of the six full-time workers will detect this on a GPS tracker – and will be sent to discover if it has found a new partner – before taking the wild animal and killing it.

But Ahlen says that the project has faced little opposition from animal rights group – as the project aims to protect ecology.

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‘Not even the animal rights groups are against what we’re doing because we are protecting our grandchildren’s nature, we are protecting the animals that will disappear if we have raccoon dogs in southern Sweden’, he said.

‘Conservation biology is not always nice, it’s not beautiful all the time.’