Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
From what I remember spending time on this topic, raccoons need super challenging locks as toys and TONS of engagement from their keepers because they get bored easily and bored raccoons == ultra destructive raccoons. Also, rabies.
The biggest challenge is that they basically have hands. He would climb up the kitchen cabinets, grab a box of cereal, open it up and sit there eating out of it like a toddler.
We only had him for a few months before reintroducing him to the woods behind the house. I've wanted a pet raccoon again ever since.
I've wanted a pet raccoon since I saw this on TV in the '80s, and raccoons aren't even a thing in Europe :(
Was a little confused, but apparently quite a few around here.
The shocker for me was the bit about Rascal learning not to wash his sugarcubes before eating (or actually, to rinse once, because he was OCD about washing his food). Not that itself, although fascinating and charming; the idea that sugar was rationed to the author's family was mindblowing to juvenile me.
wild to think they spread even all the way to Japan because of anime. and probably south Korea now. They banned raccoons in Japan but it seems to not have caught up in SK and there are a lot of racoon pet videos from SK on YouTube)
I recall watching a video about that many years ago when they had started appearing in eastern Europe.
Edit: looking at the video they do look like American ones tho
In the video it's mentioned they were unwillingly introduced by the US military, kept as pets by servicemen and escaped.
(I mean, there's good reasons my country does have those laws, and I don't _really_ want to have a wild animal as a pet, but I kinda do.)
Then identify the "morph", the gene cluster, that did the trick in the initial species, to speed up the uplift for the rest of them.
But given how intelligent they are, and how much they learn in their short lifetimes, completely self-directed and self-learning highly curious autodidact geniuses from the moment they escape their tiny egg, a race of long lived octopuses without learning brakes might be an existential threat for us.
Or they might create a magical ocean civilization. There are octopus species everywhere. Deepest ocean floor, under the polar cap, even a "land" species that lives on the beach. Everywhere from sea level down.
Changing this "death gene" via a breeding program is likely to fail, but could perhaps be accomplished via gene editing like CRISPR.
Another approach would be delaying sexual maturity. Doubling the lifespan to something like 4-5 years in the common octopus would have very interesting results. However, doubling the lifespan would effectively halve the number of offspring, meaning these mutants would be less competitive, compared to their wild relatives. This could be seen as the needed safeguard to prevent a race of highly intelligent mollusks from taking our planetary domination crown.
So all in all, delaying sexual maturity seems to be the better way to go for your project.
Do keep us updated on the advancement.
And simultaneously for post breeding longevity (however short that starts). Which can be done by post-selecting the young based on the phenotype of the parents. (No need for any harsh selection, simply choosing which young remain in the breeding pool, vs. which go there own way.)
Their short breeding cycles are a boon, since that allows for faster generations, and even small lifespan improvements would reflect significant change.
The high number of species is also a tremendous advantage.
All done at scale. Millions of octopus, across dozens of species, to efficiently select from as much existing genetic diversity as possible. Not just for faster gene clustering, but to gain different insights from different species that can be transferred, via CRISPR. As you noted.
And finally, also selecting for individual intelligence and social collaboration. They are unique in being an extremely socially intelligent animal, with high cross species cognitive understanding. There preference for solitude does not reflect any lack of social awareness. So this is one of the easier and potentially rewarding challenges.
Since effective intelligence in practice is a (literal) product of individuals and collaboration. There is tremendous opportunity for gain of function.
—-
Of course, I will need a vast underground laboratory under a tropical island for all this. A not-too-dormant volcano for cheap geothermal power. And a comfortably furnished submarine of my own design, for research forays, with a streamlined exterior inspired by the profile of a jetting octopus. Christened with an ominous name.
As for other resources? Well the ocean has infinite untapped resources, and I will soon have infinite assistants.
Ok, some of the latter might be me getting ahead of myself.
Camping I heard a crunching sound, looked out from the tent to see a racoon helping itself to granola in the back of the car. Lock your doors.
Well if you ask me adolescent raccoons are a big problem in many of our cities, I'd be worried about such a case myself.
If we can set aside ethics, it would be interesting if the result was a truly good life long pet. They are so smart.
Here in Washington state for example there have been no documented cases of rabies in any wild raccoon in at least 60 years. Same goes for all other wild terrestrial mammals here.
I'm currently 1 of 3 injections into getting a rabies vaccine and it's basically like every other vaccine I've had. A simple, painless, injection in the arm.
I got it the same time as my first shot of the Hep B vaccine too.
In addition, it used to be the case that people received abdominal shots and the course was pretty intense. That has ended, but people remember it.
I believe in this discussion the context is specifically rabies.
> and why is it called vaccination not treatment?
It's both, really. You get a shot of rabies immunoglobulin (at the site of potential infection, i.e., bite) _and_ an extended course of vaccine at the same time.
Because it sucks less than dying of Rabies and boy you don't want to know how low the bar is here
I had a pretty low risk exposure to a bat this summer and decided to get it because it's so hard to be sure they didn't bite you. Wasn't a big deal, and I got quite a lot of the antibody injections in my finger...
Rabies is neither subtle, nor slow.
If they were domesticated, you’d just get them vaccinated at the vet.
It astounds me, that government still doesn't want to kill say 20k of these invaders.
They not only get bored they get very particular with who in the family they enjoy following. Which can cause even more havoc when someone gets upset the raccoon doesn't want to be around them. One particularly funny story was a customer's kid (Business was attached to the house) begged and cried to be let hold the raccoon. We all knew it was a bad idea but Grandpa caved to the customer's demands so the kid would shut up. The racoon gladly let me hand her over to the kid, crawled up on the kids shoulder and proceeded to shit from one shoulder to the other then immediately jump off and return to my shoulder to glare at the kid. Never again did we let anyone outside the family touch the raccoon until we gave her up to a local zoo for use in educational programs since she was fairly well trained to behave for treats.
The most coherent take I've read on it is that there actually needs to be an evolutionary advantage for the species in order for the domestication to work out, which means it's essentially something that needs to take place over generations. Raccoons being cute and fluffy might be a reason that we would like to have them around, but I think the larger question is whether there's a good enough reason for them to develop a lifestyle where they hang around indoors with humans. Putting it in terms of evolution also can help clarify why the personality characteristics you mention aren't a simple obstacle to overcome; the fact that they might be better off as a species in the long run if they could just immediately switch over to being a type of house pet like a cat or dog might not be enough if the path to that from where they are now requires significant "downward movement" from a local optimum in the short term for the adaptions start becoming more advantageous so that the can reach a higher optimum.
> Raccoons are a rabies reservoir in the eastern United States, extending from Canada to Florida and as far west as the Appalachian Mountain range. Within these areas, 10% of raccoons that expose people or pets have rabies, making them one of the highest rabies-risks in the United States.
https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/php/protecting-public-health/inde...
I don't understand the language of this quote. What does it mean for an animal to expose people?
I wonder if increased interactions between humans and raccoons will lead to a reduction in that 10% figure (more reasons to bite humans).
It's possible they botched the grammar here a little, but my interpretation is saying that if you look at the group of raccoons that allow themselves to be exposed itself to a human or pet (rather than avoiding us, which is not that hard for them to do it they want), around 10% of them have rabies.
And there are programs to distribute bait laced with oral vaccines to target, among other animals, racoons. So I guess they are vaccinated, at least in some areas. TIL.
If a breach occurs they also will trap raccoons and vaccinate them by injection in the area of the breach.
Raccoons while cute, smart, interesting, etc., should not be considered as pets as long as this parasite exists.
Hmm, so evolutionary pressure of existing around humans makes animals cuter.
I wonder why we find these features endearing?
Perhaps a combination of adaptableness, small size, prodigious reproduction, and cuteness saved some species from being wiped out whereas other species didn't fare so well once humans arrived and transformed their territory. Adapt to urban encroachment or face extinction.
It's a side effect, evolution made sure we take care of our offspring.
I no longer have the book on hand, but read a few months ago that this correlation between juvenile traits and domestication was one of the main theses of Barrett's "Supernormal Stimuli" in Chapter 4. She cited a few studies of fox domestication [1], [2] and other works to support these theories.
[1]: https://courses.washington.edu/anmind/Trut%20on%20the%20Russ...
[2] https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(05)...
Daytime, larger animals (e.g. sheep, goats, or even rabbits) have a larger chance to be domesticated as food.
Larger head-size relative to the body, larger eyes, smaller jaws and noses, longer limbs, etc.
Interesting parallels across species towards less aggression, greater pro-social behavior, more physical traits that shout "trust me, I'm harmless."
Almost like pro-social, intelligent team co-operation is a huge advantage compared to solo predatory behavior.
Those features activates the same areas of our brain that babies' faces activate.
Feeling that something is "cute" is the evolutionary way that our brain is using to make us care of our kids.
Among domestic cats, there are Persian cats and Sphinx cats.
Some light reading: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ask-s...
So, what was your evidence again?
Racoons, especially in the city, will kill and eat an older housecat or easy to access domestic chickens without hesitation.
Declawing them helps, but nature happens when a declawed racoon feels a call to roam and is outmatched by even a small hawk or possum.
Some chickens made it, most in fact. But playtime involved ripping the heads off 3 of them.
They can be quite sinister.
One was kept as a pet in Jamestown Virginia in the 1600s. Another lived in the White House in the 1900s. Surely, not a decade has passed between have there been NO domesticated raccoons in the US? If living near humans changes animals, that started at least 25,000 years ago here in North America. Not recently.
My neighbors had a pet raccoon growing up. It lived inside but would come and go.
The people who wrote this article seem out of touch with the topic they chose to pretend to be experts about?
This is quickly becoming the norm for experts, unfortunately. I keep seeing more an more people with educational expertise in something that they have zero hands-on or practical experience with.
I remember being at a social event once and chatting with someone who was a business professor at any Ivy League university. Making small talk, I asked him which companies he'd worked at, and he told me that he had gone the academic track and started teaching during and after getting his PhD (in exactly what I don't remember). I remember being stunned that students would pay over $60k a year to learn about business from someone who'd never worked for or started a business.
Were you stunned that your parents paid lots of money to put you in front of educators from kindergarten to college?
Why would you restrict yourself to learning from one businessman when you can get learn from an educator who has distilled the experiences of hundreds if not thousands of business people?
(MBA, anyone?)
It primarily says they can now observe physical changes associated with domestication.
Also, keeping a wild animal as a pet does not domesticate it.
Domestication, in the way that we see having happened with dogs (and cattle, and chickens) takes a really long time.
We consider cats “domesticated” and yet demonstrably they are not. If they were much bigger, they’d eat us, and if set into wild, nearly all household cats immediately revert to feral.
I owned five ferrets once. Loved them so much, but came to the realization that there are animals that should be pets and animals that maybe shouldn’t (yet). I think we have many, many more generations before raccoons are at the same level as dogs.
I'm sorry your experience with cats hasn't been as pleasant, but I assure you they are much more domesticated than chickens - which you seem to have little experience with. Screw eating us - they'll eat each other.
I also have 2 cats, having had 2 prior. They’re great. But it’s just science that they are not fully domesticated.
I also lived on a farm as a kid.
So let’s not make assumptions to prove an incorrect point.
An animal of wild parentage that was raised by humans is tame but not domesticated. So no, there's aren't really domesticated racoons, only tame ones.
Domestication is a process that takes many generations. It is a selective breeding process more than anything else. Animals that are 1 generation away from wild ancestors aren't domesticated, by definition.
And the last category is feral animals, "that live in the wild but are descended from domesticated individuals.".
As crepuscular animals, they are very, very afraid of humans.
(I'll convince you all to get pet rats eventually!!! :))
Consider the statement above that tame raccoons need "TONS of engagement from their keepers because they get bored easily". Breeding that out means essentially a less curious, more complacent animal. Cows and sheep that easily figure out how to escape their paddocks are a liability.
Which category do you think is more clever: Wolf and coyote; or pug and chihuahua?
dog breeds considered "clever" often more closely resemble their wild ancestors. And they are often not "easy" breeds to own.
Cats can vary wildly. One of my cats seems dumb as a box of rocks and haven't even grasped the idea of object permanence. If she's tracking a laser, and I move it around a corner, she can't figure out where it went. She goes from intense staring and tracking to standing up and looking around, confused. When I bring the laser back around the corner, she's instantly back to squatting and tracking it.
Similarly I've seen cats have one of two reactions to a mirror: ignoring it entirely or actually using it by e.g. looking me in the eyes and meowing at me through it. While I've not witnessed it personally on the internet there's also tons of videos of cats freaking out and trying to fight the other cat in the mirror.
This supports the idea that the gamut of intelligence in cats is quite wide.
Step 1: Meow at "other" kitty.
Step 2: Walk around mirror to meet other kitty.
Step 3: Stare other kitty in face near edge of mirror, then suddenly bat paw around the edge to tag that elusive sucker.
Step 4: Sit and ponder.
Step 5: Accept that there is no other kitty. Hmmph.
One. Smart. Cat.
Occasionally, he'd demonstrate the ability to plan too. When he started to get territorial and start fights with neighborhood cats, we started keeping him inside. Naturally, this didn't sit right with him. After watching someone enter the house every day in the evening, eventually, he would perch next to the door in the evening waiting to bolt out the moment the door opened.
Dogs are social animals that have evolved to be human companions a long time ago. This is why they are "trainable" and, therefore, seem more intelligent.
Cats are not; they are extremely good hunters that by and large tolerate humans in exchange for easy access to food and water. You can't really train them, but they will find hiding spots you didn't even know existed and you will NEVER have problems with mice with one around.
Donkeys have a reputation for being stupid and stubborn because they're smarter than horses. Too independent for easy training, and will refuse an idiotic command.
This is exactly what a dog would say.
Does the scent gland do anything more than just stinking? For a cat, removing the claws literally removes bones from them. It limits their mobility and hurts like hell.
(Not that I want a pet skunk. Just curious as to why it's unethical)
The practice has been banned in the UK for almost 20 years, under the exact same laws as ban declawing cats. It's unnecessary mutilation with no medical justification.
Both procedures seem slightly more invasive than removing a scent gland in a skunk, given that it removes the sex organs that secrete hormones and changes their behavior for the rest of their life.
It’s possible that a skunk gets anxious when it tries to spray and nothing comes out, I can’t say I’m an expert in skunk behavior, it just seems less invasive than spaying or neutering to me.
The ethics is murky to me because I assume the procedure doesn't cause lasting pain and allows the animals to be pampered pets. The alternative is they are kept wild.
They don’t just go around spraying. It’s a defense mechanism - pretty much their only one as a matter of fact. Tame pets are very unlikely to spray anyone not trying to hurt them.
It's part of their communication system. There's no direct corollary in human qualia, but you might say it's akin to permanently destroying your ability to flirt or tell other people that something belongs to you. You would still experience the impulse, but not have the cognitive equipment to do so any longer. Removing scent glands destroys the physiological equipment, of course.
And if the scent gland is "part of their communication system", then a loaded 45 is part of a (domesticated, modern) human's.
Skunks use their anal scent glands as a defensive weapon, yes, and it's thought that this is their primary use. However, until recently, it was also thought that skunks didn't scent mark at all. It turns out that they do, through body-rubbing, like cats. It stands to reason then that we might also be wrong about the functions of their anal glands, and that (as with most carnivores) they serve some sort of less-extreme communication function in addition to the last-resort defense. But threat displays are also part of a human's communication system, yes.
In any case, there are differing accounts as to whether removal affects the animal, and also whether it's even necessary to prevent spray incidents.
https://publish.illinois.edu/maxallen/files/2021/04/Jackson-...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Skunks/comments/fyxdsk/hello_i_have...
Would they have to measure "biological" friendliness, comparing lab raised countryside-descended and city-descended raccoons? Domesticated animals can be very unfriendly. Feral cats for example.
The raw meat is even smelly.
Edit: Dexter did say that, after a few days of aging in the forest, the flavor improved considerably. He was even willing to share.
FYI, Kassel kinda is the so-called capitol of raccoons. 30k+ raccoons life there, according to estimates.
I certainly would not want to live there. It is crazy how these animals flock together and invade properties. And they aren't shy anymore due to the reverse positive reinforcement they receive by not killing them.
Yes, it is of course in Germany forbidden to kill an invading predatory species - even on your property. This is Germany 2025.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DJXsI_A5DU
https://www.kassel.de/buerger/sicherheit_und_ordnung/tiersch...
I can’t get my head around how such big animals manage to live all around us in such densely populated place. I suppose it helps that they are cartoonishly adorable.
But they are increasingly getting really, really big. It’s just a matter of time before the chonker living in my neighbour’s shed bullies me out of my house.
Curiously, that raccoon population was established legally and intentionally in the 30s to bolster local fur production; later efforts to eradiacte the animals (for being pests from an agriculture perspective) have been given up.
Damage to local ecosystems seems fortunately pretty limited, even though the raccoons are highly successful and spreading.
Example: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/raccoon-resistant-bin...
This is blatantly false.
The nandus that are living in the north can and are being killed for exactly this reason: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nandu#Wilde_Population_in_Nord... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_rhea#Distribution_and_... for a shorter paragraph in English)
I guess there is a more nuanced reason for not killing the raccoons in Kassel.
> Es gibt viel zu viele Waschbären, um mit den erlaubten jagdlichen Mitteln im städtischen Umfeld eine nachhaltige Bestandsreduzierung bewirken zu können, denn Waschbären können hohe Verlustraten durch vermehrte Fortpflanzung ausgleichen. Je mehr Waschbären getötet werden, umso mehr Jungtiere kommen nach. Die vielen Jungtiere machen aber unter Umständen mehr Probleme als die Alten, und die Gefahr einer Ausbreitung von Krankheiten und Parasiten wird durch die abwandernden Jungtiere erhöht statt vermindert.
> There are too many raccoons for permitted hunting methods within an urban context to have a sufficient effect on population numbers as raccoons react to high death rates with increased breeding. The more raccoons are killed, the more young are born. The large amount of young raccoons can create more problems than older animals, and the danger of spreading disease and parasites is increased as young animals roam from established territories.
tl;dr: you're not allowed to just randomly shoot shit in urban areas because duh, the population is too large for trapping, and the raccoons are just gonna fuck more and then go a-wandering, making everything worse.
Raccoons can and are hunted in Germany, what are you talking about? The federal laws regarding hunting don't mention them and thus allow states to decide. I haven't checked every states local laws and executive orders, but I'm not aware of any that don't allow hunting raccoons.
Along with 200k+ of the most violent species on the planet: humans.
It's pretty interesting to see their Instagram stories.
On Facebook, there's been this running gag/joke/meme/whatever going for at least the last year, where anytime the official North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission page posts anything, a large portion of the comments quickly turn into a discussion of the merits (or lack thereof) of pet raccoons[1].
I don't know exactly how it started. Somebody innocently asked "How do I get a permit for a pet raccoon?" and the page replied "You can't, they are illegal in NC" or something prosaic like that I imagine. But it became a big "thing" and now raccoon talk is everywhere. The page controllers play along with it, which is part of why it's kept going so long I guess. But sometimes they'll get semi-serious and post something like
"Look, all joking aside, the reason pet raccoons are not allowed is because no matter how friendly raccoons look, they are wild animals, not domesticated, and they can be a hazard to you, and your family and <blah, etc, etc>".
Soooo... I'm just waiting to see somebody post this very article in a comment on that page with a note saying "Suck it, NCWRC!" (all in a spirit of good fun, of course).
[1]: or one or more of another of a small set of topics, including flounder, pet alligators, armadillos, UFO's, and the possibility that the person running the page is the product of secret government genetic engineering experiments involving "all of the above". It's... complicated.
EDIT:
Welp ,that took about as long as I expected. ROFL.
Could domestication happened simple because we human expand too much?
I like your dogs too, and ain't no way I would disrespect them... Pets are not food sources. But a coon.. . They seem nice enough until they fight over food ... Then they become _ <- insert unfavoroable political party.
Weird question. My preconceptions don't overrule my tongue. (And the answer is: hairy. Very hairy.)
Tuna tastes delicious. But you may be right about mammals.
Tasty, no.