The Intelligent Life of the City Raccoon | Hacker News Reader

The Intelligent Life of the City Raccoon

nautil.us

41 pointsdnetesn16 comments

The bit about creating latches that require opposable thumbs is vaguely troubling to me. Creating selection pressure for opposable thumbs in raccoons (or some functionally similar anatomy like the sesamoid in pandas) seems like a very bad idea. Raccoons with opposable thumbs are nightmare fuel to me.

ed: Misspelling. Thanks!

sesamoid -- for easier googling. Fascinating. I never knew that. Thank you!

I'm guessing you really didn't enjoy Guardians of the Galaxy then?

i've wondered what pest animals might become given a million-year urban civilization. hands for sure. racoons become elves, miniature versions of ourselves, lurking in the shadows.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8436265

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8435358

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9419874

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11410676

Another reason to fear them: Raccoon Roundworm, which they spread through their feces.

It can destroy your eyes and brain!

Sometimes raccoons crap near my house, and I practically put on a hazmat suit to clean it up (I wear disposable gloves, pour boiling water over the site and then double bag it before throwing it in the trash,)

[...] zoonotic infection of humans is rare, though extremely dangerous due to the ability of the parasite's larvae to migrate into brain tissue and cause damage. Concern for human infection has been increasing over the years due to urbanization of rural areas resulting in the increase in proximity and potential human interaction with raccoons.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baylisascaris_procyonis

Well they are called trash pandas for a reason. I had a family of those -- a mother with a few young live across the street. But only figured out what it was after my tall trashcans with heavy lids somehow ended up with torn trash bags in them. I had no idea racoons can be that smart & determined.

I was warned not to get close or corner them they can be vicious. What eventually stopped them was putting a heavy rock on the trashcan lid. It seemed to have worked so far.

This is a shot in the dark, but some time ago, someone on HN posted a link to a science fiction short story about a few animal species that thrived and became intelligent in a post-apocalyptic, post-human world. One species was raccoons, along with ravens, who built air balloons for transportation. Fascinating read. I've been trying to find it for months. If anyone knows the story, please let me know. That would be wonderful.

I knew this article would be about Toronto before I clicked on the link. On a typical visit to Toronto, I will see more raccoons than police officers. The city is either over-raccooned or under-policed, depending on your perspective.

If there's a problem with raccoons, why not just turn to mankind's tried-and-true friend in dealing with animals: dogs? I imagine a medium-sized pair of dogs could make pretty quick work of most raccoons. And folks like dogs in their homes, so it's a win-win!

Large cats, too, might work.

Cornered raccoons fight with a ferocity that most other animals, especially domesticated pets, learn to respect after only one encounter...if they survive the encounter...

It's not uncommon for them to blind or eviscerate house pets where I live....35 acres on a rural lake...

A dog/raccoon fight in water often results in the dog being drowned by the raccoon...

They can also transmit rabies and distemper...

If you value your dog I would highly recommend that you discourage encounters with raccoons...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_dogs_in_Moscow

>If there's a problem with raccoons, why not just turn to mankind's tried-and-true friend in dealing with animals: dogs?

so many wrong things in your statement.

Bloodbathing raccoons, highly intelligent animals, just because one is too lazy to implement simple solutions to coexist! When we lived in the duplex in Palo Alto bunch of years ago there was a large family of raccoons. It was great and fun.

Yes, the dogs would go out of their way to protect their humans and the house from whatever, raccoons included. Yet putting them into such situation unnecessary (even if dogs had good chances to avoid being harmed - and they don't as raccoons are pretty serious animals) is just a violation of that trust relationship between dogs and their humans.

> Bloodbathing raccoons, highly intelligent animals, just because one is too lazy to implement simple solutions to coexist!

I don't think I want to coexist with something which carries deadly diseases and is violent. Alternatively, coexistence with violent, disease-ridden animals consists of me living in location A and them living in location B, where locations A & B are well-separated.

>I don't think I want to coexist with something which carries deadly diseases and is violent.

do you mean humans? :) Anything else taken together, including raccoons, deadly snakes and hurricanes, is the distant second when we talk about danger to you from somebody carrying deadly diseases and the danger of violence.

>coexistence with violent, disease-ridden animals consists of me living in location A and them living in location B, where locations A & B are well-separated.

so, you're living alone far and well-separated from other people i guess :)

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