How a Kids’ Cartoon Created a Racoon Invasion in Japan (2013) | Hacker News Reader

How a Kids’ Cartoon Created a Racoon Invasion in Japan (2013)

nautil.us

45 pointsdnetesn38 comments

A mother with her cub was hit by a car in front of my house when I was a kid. The mother didn't make it, so we raised the raccoon in our home. For the first couple years it was a better pet than our dogs and cat. After the second year,it started spending more and more time outside and less time with us. By the 3rd year, he stopped his regular visits and would only occasionally visit from a distance.

In an alternative history, where humanity started in North America, I could see the raccoon filling the place that the cat does today. Considering how few generations it took to breed tame foxes, I'm surprised no one has done it for raccoons.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox

Anal glands. I suspect the domesticated silver fox has the same problem.

Is the problem the "size" of the gland? My girlfriend has a boston terrier that "expresses their anal gland" enough that I know what that means. I'm curious what exactly you are suggesting. (I know very little of the animal world.)

Could you elaborate? I'm not sure what you're replying to.

Many mammals have a "musk" gland they use to mark territory and other stuff. The smell is vile. If you've ever lived with an unfixed tomcat, that will give you an idea.

I'm replying to the question as to why there isn't selective breeding of raccoon to make them suitable as pets.

A likely reason is that they have a very strong and unpleasant musky odor. Though I suppose that could be bred out too.

"Raccoons are also important vectors for the spread of infection diseases. They’re known to carry rabies, and a 2011 report in the Journal of Parasitology even found evidence for the potentially dangerous and brain-altering parasite Toxoplasmosa gondii in raccoon droppings."

It would be fairly surprising if raccoons didn't carry toxoplasma: pretty much every US cat does, about 60 million Americans, and 5-7% of Japanese cattle and swine. It's rare that it causes problems for anyone except newly infected pregnant women.

It's rare that it causes problems for anyone except newly infected pregnant women.

That is, by no means, a fact. It's believed that toxo infected humans take more risks than non-infected ones. I'd say that is a problem.

Every stray cat has the toxoplasma virus.

Toxoplasma gondii is a unicellular eukaryote, not a virus.

Racoons are a problem in Germany as well(1), where they were deliberately introduced for hunting.

1. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-overrun-...

Reading this article reminded me of a documentary I saw a few years back about hunters in England attempting to slow the spread of North American grey squirrels. It's an uphill battle, according to the European Squirrel Initiative (1):

The grey squirrel was introduced to England, Scotland and Ireland from North America in the Victorian era. It has colonised 90% of England and Wales and has expanded from its introduction sites in Scotland.

In Britain, it has few natural predators. It has successfully adapted to British lowland conditions. It is omnivorous, breeds strongly and is an aggressive settler equally at home in urban parks and the countryside.

Grey squirrels are vectors of the squirrelpox virus for which no vaccine is presently available and which is deadly to red squirrels but does not seem to affect the host. This research is cited as a "useful example of how diseases carried by invading species can act as biological weapons and speed up their conquest of native species.”

Squirrels are unbelievable pests where I live (near Boston, Mass.) but at least local hawks, eagles, coyotes, and cars, along with acorn famines every few years, help regulate the squirrel population.

1. http://www.europeansquirrelinitiative.org/the_threat.html

The obvious solution to Britain's squirrel woes is therefore to introduce hawks, eagles and coyotes, no?

(My services as a wildlife consultant are available to HR Environment Agency at any time for a nominal fee.)

We already have plenty birds of prey (including golden eagles and, here in Scotland at least, sea eagles). There is even occasional talk of re-introducing wolves.

The real problem is that we already have a native species of squirrels, red squirrels, which everybody loves and are being out-competed by the grey squirrels.

I was kidding around: introducing more invasive species to counter invasive species seems to be a common (unfortunate) trope when attempting to get rid of unwanted critters.

(Also: Arethusa...are you a Cryptonomicon fan, by any chance?)

Yeah - been using the same id since Slashdot days (which I only seemed to have stopped using in 2010).

I guess I am quite the Neal Stephenson fan - my WoT and XBL ids are variations of Fraa Jad.

Growing up in rural Arkansas I never considered raccoons cute or cuddly. The ones you meet out in the forest there are basically nature's version of the ninja. Vile things that will hiss at you and attack animals of any size.

It wasn't until I moved to California that I saw the suburban variety of raccoon. I was taking the trash out to the dumpster when I came upon this fat, slow raccoon waddling across the parking lot. Seeing me made it waddle slightly faster, at a point where it tried to go underneath a Civic. It was too fat to do that and got stuck halfway and squealed a little bit before it glanced back at me and waddled around the car.

They are not cute or cuddly. And unfortunately there is a lot of rabies among the ones in the eastern US.

>the best antidote against the anthropogenic origins of animal invasions is wildlife education. If more people understood that raccoons do not make good pets, no matter how adorable, Japan might not be in the unfortunate position in which they now find themselves

Not a particularly good solution in a world without time travel.

What on earth were the kids' parents thinking? You would think they'd be somewhat wary about buying a wild animal known for spreading disease to be a pet for their children.

"but it's so cute..." /s

Reminds me of a Futurama episode...

But pretty much everytime men introduce new species in an ecosystem,it seems to have dire consequences. Which shows that ecosystems relies on a delicate balance.We often think we're in control of all this,but not really.

Depends on if you classify nearly any possible change ever as 'dire'.

As far as I can tell, the dominant philosophy is something like this:

- Humans clearly involved in change to the ecosystem: dire.

- Human involvement in change to the ecosystem not immediately apparent: possibly not dire, pending further investigation into the role of human involvement.

Fishermen introducing fish into a lagoon is an environmental disaster; hurricanes doing the same thing is just more of the majesty of nature.

At the end the genepool of species is a natural resource- a mechanism that allows the ecosystem to adapt faster to new (possibly man made) conditions. This is important to us, especially considering that the atmosphere is about to change quite drastically. Obviously there's natural fluctuations in the gene pool, but we should simply regard it as a resource that shouldn't be spent lightheartedly. You wouldn't introduce a fish to a small lake if it means you destroy a billion dollar rare earth material would you?

It's not like things are perfectly adapted. Many changes will put species closer to their ideal and give them a larger safety zone.

I didn't say that there shouldn't be any change though, all I'm saying is that we should be careful, i.e. study the environment as much as we can before committing irreversible changes.

But when you talk about the genepool as a resource that is spent in response to change, you imply that all changes are bad and deplete the flexibility of the species. Changes that relieve stresses can give you more flexibility.

Well, of course an ecosystem as it exists in a given moment in time relies on a "delicate balance". But the fact is that all ecosystems change. Migration, and population change are the norm, stasis is the exception. It requires contextualization to define a particular change as "harmful" or "beneficial". In reality ecosystems will adapt, as they've done for millions upon millions of years. Perhaps we humans will find that the new, adapted ecosystem is less to our liking in some way but it will still generally be viable.

They don't spread disease any more than dogs or cats.

It's a particularly odd response to a story whose moral is that raccoons don't make good pets.

Clearly Disney needs to introduce Japan to the Daniel Boone character such that every child in Japan will want a coonskin cap :-) Here in Northern California racoons are a menace, they use the sewer system as their own little underground highway, and they dig up gardens and lawns. They are smart enough that it is difficult to trap them with a catch and release trap.

If raccoons are a menace, what's the idea behind catch-and-release? How would that damp down the raccoons?

I would imagine it's actually catch-neuter-release. Neutered animals compete with intact ones for resources, but don't use those resources to make more animals.

I live in California, and just because something is a menace and has no redeeming qualities, if it is a mammal it is "illegal" to kill it without a license. The best you can hope for is to have vector control (the department that picks up various animals) euthanize if if they see it more than a few times get caught.

I expected this to involve Pom Poko (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pom_Poko). Instead I learned that the US had an industry exporting raccoons to Japan!

That's about raccoon dogs (tanuki), not raccoons.

Just another example demonstrating that advertising and propaganda work, almost too well.

Sometimes life DOES imitate art.

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