Seals, bears, skunks and raccoons all belong to the dog side of the family
Split the meat-eating mammals down the middle and you get cat-like carnivores on one side and dog-like ones on the other. The dog-like half, Caniformia, sweeps in not only wolves and foxes but bears, weasels, raccoons, skunks, red pandas, and every seal, sea lion and walrus.
Caniforms diversified mainly in North America and northern Eurasia, whereas their feline counterparts radiated in Africa and southern Asia. They tend to have longer jaws and more teeth, with less specialised shearing teeth, and lean towards omnivory and opportunism. Most cannot retract their claws, though the fisher, marten, red panda, ringtail and some foxes can. Wild land-dwelling caniforms live on every continent but Antarctica, while pinnipeds roam all the oceans. The earliest known members, around 42 million years ago, were nimble tree-climbing hunters resembling martens, such as Miacis cognitus.
Nine families survive. Canids number about 35 species and are the most social, sometimes hunting in packs, and the domestic dog varies more in body shape than any other mammal. Bears are the biggest land caniforms, from male polar bears of 350 to 680 kilograms down to sun bears of 30 to 60. The red panda of the Himalayas now has a family all its own, though fossil relatives lived in North America. Skunks and stink badgers, once lumped with weasels, form a separate lineage of 12 species. Mustelids, with roughly 57 species, make up the largest family in the entire order Carnivora. Raccoons, coatis and their kin have banded tails, apart from the kinkajou.
The marine branch split from other caniforms about 50 million years ago. Whether its closest land relatives are bears or mustelids is still unsettled. True seals range from the ringed seal at 45 kilograms to the southern elephant seal at 2,400. Eared seals, 15 species found everywhere except the North Atlantic, have visible ear flaps, more dog-like faces and rear flippers that swivel forward. The walrus stands alone in its family, a 2,000-kilogram tusked forager of clams on Arctic seabeds.
Source: Caniformia
