This species is nocturnal, active at ground level, and solitary. Its diet consists of molluscs, fish, crabs, insects, and amphibians (Emmons and Feer 1990). Very little is known about its ecology or behaviour, although limited information is available from captive studies (Eisenberg 1989). It is often believed to be limited to coastline and riverbank habitats, but it has also been recorded in non-aquatic habitats at certain times of the year. It is a species rarely seen deep in the rain forest, but it is found in llanos and evergreen forest and in Andean forests. In the zone of geographic overlap with the Northern Raccoon, the latter is found in mangrove swamps while the Crab-eating Raccoon is found along inland rivers (Emmons and Feer 1990).

The Crab-eating Raccoon is distributed from southern Costa Rica to northern Argentina (east border of the Andes), on Trinidad, and possibly on a number of other Caribbean islands. Within Costa Rica and immediately east of the border (i.e. Panama), it is sympatric with the Northern Raccoon P. lotor (Eisenberg and Redford 1999, de la Rosa and Nocke 2000). Reputed occurrence in northern Colombia is not confirmed because it is easily confused with P. lotor (González-Maya et al. 2011) but recent craniometric evidence suggest both species are present in the Caribbean region (Marín et al. 2012); neither external features nor recent records are provided. Recent records have expanded altitudinal range up to 2,350 (Marín et al. 2012).

No official protection is given to Crab-eating Raccoon throughout most of its range (de la Rosa and Nocke 2000), however, its range does overlap with a number of protected areas.