I believe the male raccoon has a similar bone.
*And* you just may get a side dish of rabies!
Woohoo!
The raccoon’s is much more interesting, it is bent into a hook like Clinton’s...and explains why female coons go to great lengths to den up so the males have a hard time getting at them.
They’re called hillbilly toothpicks...and were sometimes worn for virility
“I believe the male raccoon has a similar bone.”
Yes it does. Hunters used to make “Ivory toothpicks” out of them. When I started reading I thought that maybe this actually was a relative of the raccoon like panda bears but it does appear to be a real bear.
Most male mammals have this bone, except for primates.
Even cats and dogs.
A raccoon’s is about 3 inches long, where a mink has one suitable and small enough for making earrings
When I was in Texas as a teenager, they called them “Texas toothpicks”.
A coon bone would be bleached and boiled and hung around the neck.
If sharpened (because it is dull and rounded) it made a handy toothpick.
Hippies would glue an alligator clip to one to make “road clips”.
Women would wear mink bones as earrings.
In all forms, they were quite popular back in the day.