I once opened up the front of a cage with a Speckled Kingsnake in it and leaned in too close to look at it and it struck and grabbed me by the nose and I flinched back and pulled it out of the cage with my nose and it hung there for a while before it disengaged. I figured that it was no big deal.
I believe that there is reason to think that at least some of the dogs and/or coyotes and the raccoons that have little or no hair, and especially the apparently completely hairless ones, are that way because they have a genetic makeup that causes them to be like that, rather than mange being responsible, as seems to be universally assumed without evidence. There are, after all, essentially hairless breeds of dogs owing to genetic makeup and the same might be the case with the coyotes and raccoons in question. Some of these animals, although appearing to be completely hairless, seem to have completely healthy skin otherwise and some have the sort of short upright isolated hair on the top of the head like that in some of the breeds of ''hairless'' dogs. I would expect mangy animals to still have some patches of crappy looking hair and to have scabby and generally unhealthy looking skin.
I once opened up the front of a cage with a Speckled Kingsnake in it and leaned in too close to look at it and it struck and grabbed me by the nose and I flinched back and pulled it out of the cage with my nose and it hung there for a while before it disengaged. I figured that it was no big deal.
I believe that there is reason to think that at least some of the dogs and/or coyotes and the raccoons that have little or no hair, and especially the apparently completely hairless ones, are that way because they have a genetic makeup that causes them to be like that, rather than mange being responsible, as seems to be universally assumed without evidence. There are, after all, essentially hairless breeds of dogs owing to genetic makeup and the same might be the case with the coyotes and raccoons in question. Some of these animals, although appearing to be completely hairless, seem to have completely healthy skin otherwise and some have the sort of short upright isolated hair on the top of the head like that in some of the breeds of ''hairless'' dogs. I would expect mangy animals to still have some patches of crappy looking hair and to have scabby and generally unhealthy looking skin.
Sorry – presume you mean fish tails? Or is there something I'm missing?