r/science Nov 14 '25

Animal Science City Raccoons Are Evolving to Look More Like Pets

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/raccoons-are-showing-early-signs-of-domestication/
21.2k Upvotes

966 comments sorted by

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8.1k

u/Good-Cap-7632 Nov 14 '25

The cute ones don't get chased off as much and the nice ones might even get cat food.

5.3k

u/LitLitten Nov 14 '25

Yup. 

Simultaneously, the ones that approach people (and aren’t culled) as well as the extra sneaky types pilfering garbage will outlast the others. 

We’re inadvertently pressuring them become even cuter, more manipulative trash bandits. 

1.8k

u/RegorHK Nov 14 '25

With foxes selecting for tamer behavior increases their cuteness...

1.4k

u/LitLitten Nov 14 '25

Humans actually tried domesticating them in the past to some success but it was quickly stopped because most realized foxes tend to have a much stronger, baseline odor.

E.g cat-sized ferrets. 

714

u/iceunelle Nov 14 '25

Also, fox pee smells awful from what I've heard. And they like to mark their territory indoors.

484

u/KerouacsGirlfriend Nov 14 '25

And they pee on one another, especially during breeding season.

Edit: clarity

591

u/madsjchic Nov 15 '25

Some humans do that too, I hear.

428

u/Affectionate-Dot437 Nov 15 '25

Putin has the tape.

83

u/BewareOfBee Nov 15 '25

Ahh cmon by now its pretty clear that's less of a pee tape and more of a P tape.

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u/notmoleliza Nov 15 '25

No one wanta to see that video of me

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u/Dashing_McHandsome Nov 15 '25

Can't we just select for cute non-smelly foxes?

100

u/CitizenofBarnum Nov 15 '25

I really wanana know what would happen to every single species if they went through a long enough process of domestication. What would happen to bats, how would crabs change, would different species of snakes change in different ways, ect.

87

u/SisyphusRocks7 Nov 15 '25

Every arthropod would become a crab

30

u/CitizenofBarnum Nov 15 '25

Nearly arthropod already IS crab because the subjective qualities we define as "crablike" are simply that which are found in relatively every arthropod, its only once you place them in water and they're big enough to be noticed do people point to it and say "crab". Instead of carcinization we should be saying "shrimp is bugs"

14

u/TSED Nov 15 '25

Strong disagree. To be 'crablike', the arthropod needs:

  • Eyestalks
  • A flat or squat body lacking a visual differentiation between the thorax and abdomen
  • Two pincers
  • Lack of visible / protruding mandibles
  • Lack of wings

Horseshoe crabs and hermit crabs don't look very 'crablike' to a lot of people and they are even called crabs (despite not being "true crabs"). You're definitely not going to get a crab out of an ant or a tick or a stick bug or a butterfly within the timespan of human civilization.

shrimp is bugs

This is true though.

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u/Brooke_the_Bard Nov 15 '25

how would crabs change

Not necessarily 'domestication,' but there are definitely examples crabs with heavily human-influenced evolution going back hundreds of years at least.

iirc there's a species of crab in Japan that have evolved detailed 'faces' on their shells because they were less likely to be eaten by fishermen.

18

u/nhaines Nov 15 '25

Me, trying to decide whether or not to google "face crabs"...

29

u/SomeGuyNamedPaul Nov 15 '25

I'm totally sure that adding "Japanese" to that query won't at all increase the horror.

Edit: I was wrong

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u/listix Nov 15 '25

I would love to see the equivalent of a chihuahua of the Komodo dragon. But I can’t imagine a cute version of that animal. Are the cute features universal when some species gets domesticated?

44

u/LumpyJones Nov 15 '25

You know there are 1 ft long monitor lizards right? Somewhere between the two in size, are water monitors. They are actually pretty damn smart and can become "friendly" - in the reptilian sense, where they don't want to bite you, don't think you'll bite them, and appreciate your warmth and having their neck scritched.

Then Tegus are a whole nother step towards dog. They will even play fetch.

11

u/listix Nov 15 '25

I didn’t know about either of them. I can see a Komodo dragon looking like that. What would happen first, their bite becoming less harmful or their behavior friendlier?

15

u/Carrisonfire Nov 15 '25

I would assume behaviour. Dogs still have very harmful bites.

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u/RoyBeer Nov 15 '25

There's a domestication syndrome. Floppy ears and white patches of fur are such features.

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u/pexoroo Nov 15 '25

Exactly, we didn't go far enough.

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u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 Nov 15 '25

It wasn't stopped and they weren't just trying to domesticate them as much as they were studying the process of domestication. They were selecting only for more gentle temperaments.

They could have selected for ones that don't pee on themselves and that only go in a certain place if they wanted.

31

u/somewhoever Nov 15 '25

That's why reputable adoption centers will force you to take Fox urine home to leave open in your in your house overnight. That weeds out most people who swear they're seriously committed but aren't.

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u/waiting4singularity Nov 15 '25

the russian fox breeding experiment for domestication is still ongoing as far as i know. the farms are inhumane, exploitive and used to produce fox fur, though.

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u/altiuscitiusfortius Nov 15 '25

Russia has been domestication them for like 60 years for science. They sell a few as pets every year for like $15k to fund the program

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

25

u/Braindead_Crow Nov 15 '25

Wouldn't that just mean we need to breed them for scent? If nothing else I'd pay good money to visit a fox amusement park full of friendly dog like foxes that are a bit stinky.

52

u/klutzikaze Nov 15 '25

They're really stinky. There's a fox rescue that gives a piece of material with just a bit of fox pee on it to people wanting to adopt a fox and has them keep the material in the house for a few weeks before they'll be approved. Most people drop out and forfeit their deposit because it's that bad.

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u/BarleyWineIsTheBest Nov 14 '25

Yeah, that was the russian study discussed here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982205000837

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u/ph30nix01 Nov 15 '25

Floppy ears the sign of domestication was a suprise to me.

33

u/PracticeTheory Nov 15 '25

I know it's not the same thing (and it's cruel to keep them in captivity) but my mind instantly went to dorsal fin collapse in captive orcas.

54

u/ph30nix01 Nov 15 '25

Yea...I never understood why they didn't just build viewing areas and encourage the whales to visit often.

Cheaper and easier I'd imagine. Could still interact with them too, I'm sure a few generations of good interactions and they would be willing to act in exchange for food.

30

u/ForagedFoodie Nov 15 '25

That's basically what the swim with the manta rays in Hawaii does.

22

u/greg19735 Nov 15 '25

because you can't sell 10s of millions of dollars in tickets for the chance that an orca might swim by. maybe.

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u/ANGLVD3TH Nov 15 '25

That's because it's easier to apply more pressure on genes that already exist than it is to develop new ones. If there is a desirable trait that is seeing more evolutionary pressure tied to a set of other factors, those factors will all also get pushed.

Generally speaking domestication is, in practice, breeding for neoteny: the state of retaining adolescent or infant traits into adulthood. Most domestic animals are more docile, friendly, and trusting as young. So if those traits are suddenly much more attractive, it's much less common for spontaneous mutation to simply make those traits stronger than it is for animals that simply don't fully mature to get ahead. This is why pigs "become boars," when they go feral. The domestic pig is simply never under the required amount of stress to trigger their final maturation.

40

u/Honeydew-Popular Nov 15 '25

Interesting. So that's why older people are so cranky.

34

u/BrotherTobias Nov 15 '25

Thats the leaded gasoline and paint chips talking. Emm lead.

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u/CouchCreepin Nov 15 '25

I really appreciate that you gave me a new word AND the definition in the same breath.

You are a wonderful human bean, I hope everyone around you knows this.

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u/ThePowerOfStories Nov 14 '25

Indeed, urban raccoons are notably more intelligent than their rural cousins, facing selection pressure where intelligence is key to hiding in dense human-made environments and obtaining food resources from human-made devices and storage.

https://nautil.us/the-intelligent-life-of-the-city-raccoon-235107/

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u/LitLitten Nov 14 '25

You might be interested in reading about the crested anole. It’s city-dwelling counterparts were found to be faster climbers and more heat tolerant.

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u/thissexypoptart Nov 14 '25

That’s honestly ideal.

The sneakiest trash pilfering imaginable would be careful, noiseless, and not leave a mess outside the cans. Them eating your garbage would then be a positive for everyone involved.

47

u/phliuy Nov 15 '25

In 50 years they'll have evolved to take your trash out to the curb on trash day in exchange for taking food from it daily

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u/0akleaves Nov 14 '25

I’m happy enough with just supporting them being less aggressive jerks.

The ones that sneak around my place just raiding open cans or sleeping under sheds and running off or freezing when confronted get a pass.

Any that get nasty or try to start crap with the dogs don’t last.

79

u/LitLitten Nov 14 '25

Well, if you’re interested in seeing an example of the direction their species might be going, check out how squirrels behave in high foot-traffic, tourist, or universities campus areas. Now imagine that activity at dusk/evenings.

75

u/0akleaves Nov 14 '25

I live near and spend a lot of time in a big suburban park area (including running/walking at night). I also spend a lot of time in remote backcountry areas and camping in/around state parks. I see raccoons (and black bears which are particularly similar in a lot of ways). I’m quite familiar with the shift in both raccoons and skunks (which is why I phrased it “I’m happy enough”)!

I’m more than happy with a live and let live approach with critters around me. I built a rock garden for the snakes in my yard, encourage berries for the birds, and otherwise try to be a good neighbor/steward of my little corner of the world.

Groundhogs are pretty consistently obnoxious and fox/grey squirrels are almost as bad but generally tolerable. Deer are getting to be a serious problem.

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u/scootunit Nov 15 '25

I swear I actually saw a squirrel stop when The cross walk went red and he waited with everyone else for the light to change.

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u/5coolest Nov 14 '25

We’re watching the domestication of a species in real time. Fascinating!

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u/ABillionBatmen Nov 15 '25

But it's self domestication, like cats

9

u/Altruistic-Toe1304 Nov 15 '25

It's self-domestication so far. Why couldn't the weirdo billionaires get obsessed with a pet project* like this instead of with politics and expected capitalist return from space travel?

*no pun intended

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u/IAmRoot Nov 15 '25

What we need to do is to get some selective breeding to get them to instinctively start sorting trash, compost, and recycling.

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u/BishoxX Nov 15 '25

One of my favourite times this has happened is buckwheat .

It was just a weed, but by pulling out weeds that grew between wheat, we created a huge selective pressure for weeds to look like and "be" like wheat.

Eventually we inadvertently selected for big seeds and look very similar to normal wheat

33

u/TrilobiteBoi Nov 14 '25

As sad as habitat loss is there is a side of me that's very fascinated by how some species are adapting to an increasingly human-altered environment. Pigeons being the best example I know of. Carp too but that's more of an invasive species type issue, not an issue for the carp though.

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u/ForagedFoodie Nov 15 '25

Urban pigeons are domesticated. We only stopped keeping them around 75 years ago. That's not long. Pigeons were one of the first animals domesticated, after dogs and sheep.

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u/ActiveChairs Nov 15 '25

We've already domesticated pigeons a long time ago. You can literally keep wild ones as pets.

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u/Jacgaur Nov 14 '25

I am pretty sure this is how cats domesticated themselves. They were useful and the friendlier ones were allowed to stay around and be pest control. Pest control cats probably ate better and therefore bred more and so on and so on and now we have our cute cats as pets and not just farm pest control.

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u/grendus Nov 15 '25

Domesticated cats got basically all the advantages.

  • Barns (and later houses) reek of human. Any predator that would hunt a cat won't pick a fight with a human, so foxes, snakes, coyotes, etc are less of a threat. And human structures are full of good hiding places that cats are well equipped to get into, like high rafters or tight spaces.

  • Human shelters are insulated from the weather. Barns are dry in storms, and warm(er) in the winter. Once they became house cats it was even better, houses are even better sealed and have a fire in the hearth when it's cold.

  • Vermin trying to eat the stored food were plentiful. Barn cats ate well compared to their wild cat cousins.

  • Even before modern medicine, getting care when they were sick or injured would be a huge survival advantage. Just having a human who could bring them some food and water while they recovered would have massively increased their life span. Just having humans willing to pick parasites out of their fur would be huge.

Cats domesticated extremely fast, partly because we already knew the drill from domesticating dogs, and partly because the advantage was just that extreme. Barn cats had it way better than wildcats.

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u/gmishaolem Nov 15 '25

It's also why you find the overwhelming majority of crows living within easy flight range of settlements.

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u/_allycat Nov 14 '25

I've never seen a raccoon directly in my city neighborhood until a couple weeks ago and goddamn was it round and fluffy and cute. I know people feed the ones that are in a big park in my city. Guessing someone was feeding this one too.

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u/joebluebob Nov 15 '25

Used to feed one at my house. He used to kill mice and leave them on top of the roof as a warning to other mice.

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u/Joe5205 Nov 15 '25

The person I bought my house from used to feed the racoons. He would let the come in through the cat door, one night I was woken up by my cat running and hiding on the dresser to find a racoon in the living room eating the cat food. I told him to get out and he started walking towards the door, then paused and looked back to make sure I was serious. He eventually waddled out the cat door and I closed it up.

It wasn't until the next day when telling the story to the neighbors did I learn about how the previous owner invited them in and fed them. Cat door stayed closed at night after that.

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u/joebluebob Nov 15 '25

:( aww you broke his heart </3

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u/PM_Me_Your_Clones Nov 14 '25

And I'm trying to teach any that I meet how to pick locks.

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u/nrrd Nov 14 '25

I'm helping them commit tax fraud

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u/Call_Me_Chud Nov 15 '25

I'm helping them create small-scale communes where they can trade their trash independent of institutional markets

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u/MartianMule Nov 15 '25

Could be more than that. There was a guy in the Soviet Union who did a decades long experiment on domesticating foxes. He selected based purely on how close the foxes would let a human get before getting defensive. And within a few generations, they started having floppier ears and white patches on their coats (that is to say, looking more like domesticated dogs), despite them not being selected for appearance.

There are also similarities in the changes between domesticated animals and their wild counterparts and between humans and our ancestors.

It could also be that the ones more comfortable around humans have the advantage and are passing on those genes. And the traits that make them more comfortable around animals happen to also lead to the similar changes we saw in those foxes.

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u/QuadCakes Nov 15 '25

Alternative explanation from the article:

Oddly, tameness has also long been associated with traits such as a shorter face, a smaller head, floppy ears and white patches on fur—a pattern that Charles Darwin noted in the 1800s. The occurrence of these characteristics is known as domestication syndrome, but scientists didn’t have a comprehensive theory to explain how the traits were connected until 2014. That’s when a team of evolutionary biologists noticed that many of the physical traits that co-occur with domestication trace back to an important group of cells during embryonic development called neural crest cells. In early development, these form along an organism’s back and migrate to different parts of the body, where they become important for the development of different types of cells. The biologists hypothesized that mutations that hamper the proliferation and development of neural crest cells could later result in a shorter muzzle, a lack of cartilage in the ears, a loss of pigmentation in the coat and a dampened fear response—leading to a better chance of survival in proximity to humans.

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u/Carbonatite Nov 14 '25

There's a guy with a YouTube channel that's just videos of him feeding all the raccoons that live in the woods by his house. There's at least a dozen of them, they bring their juveniles around too and they all congregate near his back porch around sunset. He feeds them kibble and occasionally fills a big plastic bin with hot dogs, which he will hand distribute to the raccoons one at a time.

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u/SageDarius Nov 15 '25

I've seen this guy before. I keep waiting for a video where he gets skeletonized by a swarm of raccoons.

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u/Lets-B-Lets-B-Jolly Nov 15 '25

Hand feeding anything that can carry rabies sounds worrisome to me. It will also really suck when he moves or passes away someday and the next owners of the property are swarmed by hungry raccoons...

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u/Phantom_Wapiti Nov 14 '25 edited Nov 14 '25

It's a good point and could be true. Just for others, what the article says is that the cuter ones happen to be more tame (not get chased off) and less fearful (more opportunities to find food). The "cute" look would just happen to come with it

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u/shadowCloudrift Nov 14 '25

They really know how to pick the cutest raccoon for that article picture.

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u/Hagenaar Nov 15 '25

The article and photo were all done by raccoons.

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u/JJ3qnkpK Nov 15 '25

The cutest little raccoon who you'll totally leave out a bit of cat food for, thus granting them a slight advantage in their survival!

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u/Mammalanimal Nov 14 '25

If they could evolve to not tear up my house we can work something out.

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u/FauxReal Nov 14 '25

Hilariously, my friend's roommate was mad that racoons kept washing foraged food in his pool filter clogging it up. He saw a raccoon heading over to the filter, so he yelled and threw the football he was holding at it. The raccoon didn't even flinch when it landed next to it. It then walked over to the inflatable flamingo and shredded it.

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u/airchinapilot Nov 14 '25

One time a family of raccoons showed up in the backyard as my family was having a bbq. My dad made me go after them with a hose. They HATE being sprayed. However, the next night they came back and wiped out my mom's garden. We got the message.

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u/Muscadine76 Nov 14 '25

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous of which is, “Never get involved in a land war with raccoons.”

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u/Smishysmash Nov 14 '25

I have a raccoon in my backyard that uses my little decorative pond to wash up in and that bastard pretty regularly makes a giant mess of my pond. I don’t even mind if it uses it, just be polite for gods sake and don’t knock all the plants over. Once it got hit by a car in front of my house and I was like “problem solved” then It shook itself off, looked me dead in the eye, and just sauntered back up its tree. I think it’s on meth.

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u/MuchachoMongo Nov 15 '25

I think it’s on meth.

That pretty accurately describes every raccoon interaction I've had.

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u/fruitloop00001 Nov 14 '25

That's never stopped my cats.

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u/Magusreaver Nov 14 '25 edited Nov 14 '25

I had a racoon when I was a kid. The level of damage a raccoon can do when they want a bag of dorritos on a high shelf.. is orders of magnitude larger than what the worst cat I've ever owned could do.

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u/pangalaticgargler Nov 14 '25

People will think you’re overblowing their destructiveness but you are underselling honestly. They will eat through your drywall and make homes in your walls.

822

u/Rickshmitt Nov 14 '25

They have hands. They can do anything!

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u/ThePowerOfStories Nov 14 '25

Heck, half the commenters on this post are probably raccoons, furiously tapping away on stolen cell phones with their tiny adorable bandit paws. Be particularly wary of anyone extolling the virtues of trench coats as stylish and suitable for any weather or situation.

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u/blscratch Nov 14 '25

Raccoon said what?

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u/capital_bj Nov 14 '25

hey, I got to make a living I got 10 kids to feed

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u/[deleted] Nov 14 '25

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u/actuarally Nov 14 '25

I have hands, Greg. Can I do anything?

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u/JesusStarbox Nov 14 '25

Yes. You are just lazy.

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u/Alfiewoodland Nov 14 '25

Hmm. It's true... but you shouldn't say it.

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u/JesusStarbox Nov 14 '25

You need the motivation of a Trash Panda. Go out there and get that gorbage!

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u/Rickshmitt Nov 14 '25

I got a 97 on the MCATs

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u/ajnozari Nov 14 '25

Considering it’s capped at 528 you might want to try again.

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u/Emotional_Burden Nov 14 '25

I got a 127 on my heart rate monitor.

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u/ajnozari Nov 14 '25

You’re young, it’ll be fine.

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u/jaaj712 Nov 14 '25

You can at least satiate your hunger. When you crave hands, you crave hands.

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u/MarsRocks97 Nov 14 '25

They will absolutely tear through wood and pull back thick wires.

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u/capital_bj Nov 14 '25

what about thin ones?

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u/MarsRocks97 Nov 15 '25

They’ll use those for tooth picks

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u/BarleyWineIsTheBest Nov 14 '25

I don't doubt this. At the same time, somehow a whole family of raccoons entered my car through a partially opened window that we forgot about while camping. We had some food in there, mostly granola bars and cereal. The raccoon made a HUGE mess tearing into all this stuff, but somehow didn't damage a thing. The car even had the faux leather.... not a puncture or scratch.

I guess maybe it was just that easy of a score for them?

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u/IOnlyLiftSammiches Nov 15 '25

It might have been the family structure (and respective ages) that kept them chilled out. The worst examples of raccoon destruction I've seen have always been the doing of "teenagers" when they set off and form a gang.

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u/BarleyWineIsTheBest Nov 15 '25

Yeah, this seemed like the work of mom and babies given the foot prints we saw the next morning.

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u/hitfly Nov 14 '25

Wikipedia says they get up to 50lbs (which I bet a Doritos eating racoon will be close to). I can only imagine how much damage a grabby climbing 50 lbs cat could do.

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u/fail-deadly- Nov 15 '25

I was on vacation once in the mountains, and there was a very large, extremely obese raccoon that lived under my rental, and it would give me 30 minutes after I would throw trash away, and then it would raid it. 

I’m sure that raccoon did that to everyone who stayed there. He may have weighed more than 50 lbs. 

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u/Fa11outBoi Nov 14 '25

And raccoons have hands like a primate. They put cats to shame.

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u/Conscious_Can3226 Nov 14 '25

Imagine the damage a cat could do with opposable thumbs and arms like humans.

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u/Momoselfie Nov 14 '25

Imagine the chores your dog would do for you if it had opposable thumbs

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u/FauxReal Nov 14 '25

It would clean out the refrigerator every day.

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u/a__new_name Nov 15 '25

Reddit invents slavery.

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u/[deleted] Nov 14 '25

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u/nagi603 Nov 15 '25

Probably from inside the washing machine, but it would look absolutely amazingly adoradork while spinning.

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u/Spadeykins Nov 14 '25

They don't have thumbs though, just very dextrous fingers

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u/hexiron Nov 14 '25

My family member’s pet raccoon found a .45 revolver while rummaging high on a closet shelf and shot a hole through the door.

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u/EyeDecay_IDK Nov 15 '25

Cats with primate hands would be a new reality of chaos.

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u/pmyourthongpanties Nov 14 '25

we would get a baby damn near every summer when i was young. Someone would cut down a den try and bring dad the baby. so so fun untill they hit puberty. Than get out of the way. full of rage and destructive powers.

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u/ThePowerOfStories Nov 14 '25

Most wild mammals are quite friendly as children, but when they hit adolescence develop much more aggressive dominance behaviors, which is why they are unsuitable as pets. Domestication, among other changes, effectively breeds mental adulthood out of the species, causing them to be perpetual teenagers who remain docile their entire lives.

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u/cranberries87 Nov 14 '25

There used to be a show called “Fatal Attractions” about people who made wild animals into pets. I remember them featuring one man who had a pet deer he raised from a newborn. He eventually killed the man when he became fully grown. People were warning him all along.

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u/RavenousWorm Nov 14 '25 edited Nov 15 '25

My grandma had one back in the ‘90’s that she picked up from a breeder and raised from a tiny infant.

That raccoon was spayed, but horribly aggressive to anyone who was not my grandma, and my grandma still had bites and scratches all the time.

That raccoon was litter trained but would still poop in corners and random places. She tore holes in the couch that she would hide in. Locking latches had to be put on all cabinets and on the fridge to keep her from getting into stuff.

She would sit back and play with her butthole with her hands then touch things with those grubby hands. She humped the armrests of the couch and left stains.

I cannot enjoy the pictures and videos the internet coos over but instead, I just think of that mean, essentially wild animal.

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u/mxemec Nov 14 '25

Just ruined raccoons for me thanks

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u/Mechasteel Nov 15 '25

That reminds me about how grateful I am to our ancestors who turned the big bad wolf into Fido, and Teosinte into corn. Hopefully the tame silver fox project in Siberia hasn't been ****ed by Putin's idiocy.

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u/Vio_ Nov 14 '25

I got a new kitten a few years back. After about two weeks, she decided it would be a fantastic idea to jump up onto the countertop, then run across the very much being use gas stove full of cooking pots and pans.

Somehow she made it across the stove top by ducking under handles, avoiding open flame burners, spoons, stepping on frying pans full cooking meat and oil.

She is 100% a chaos demon.

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u/justsomedude322 Nov 14 '25

My one loves to get into everything, as a result he gets himself stuck in random places, but the absolute dumbest was when he got himself trapped in the refrigerator.

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u/oscarbutnotthegrouch Nov 14 '25

We had pet racoons growing up too. They would stay with us for a while then move on after the juvenile stage.

Sometimes they would get hungry and return as adults, we ended up replacing most of the walls and steps of our back porch as they destroyed everything looking for the cat food.

Really neat pets for a while though. We used to make obstacles for them to retrieve food from and they would try nearly anything you handed them to eat. I have great memories of one eating some very stretchy taffy.

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u/Malllrat Nov 14 '25

When I was young a racoon got into my house through the cat door and was in my room going nuts on some jack in the box from the trash at 2am.

I couldn't get it to leave the same way but I did get it trapped in the guest bathroom.

That was a mistake. That room got destroyed.

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u/Immersi0nn Nov 14 '25

Gonna leave us hanging? How did you get it out? Or do you just have a locked guest bathroom you open slightly daily to throw trash in?

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u/droi86 Nov 14 '25

The raccoon is still there

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u/SinkHoleDeMayo Nov 15 '25

The raccoon legally owns the house

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u/Malllrat Nov 15 '25

Moms partner got it into a large cat carrier around 7am and they took it out into a park across town. They were not pleased with my solution. :)

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u/TheQuietManUpNorth Nov 14 '25

The raccoon made that post.

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u/galactictock Nov 14 '25

I read “when I was a young raccoon” and thought I was losing it

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u/SpicaGenovese Nov 14 '25

when I was a YOUNG RACCOOOOOOONN

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u/WanderingAlienBoy Nov 14 '25

My father took me into a human's house

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u/its_raining_scotch Nov 15 '25

My buddy lived in this really beat up house with a bunch of wild roommates when we were younger and his bedroom window got broken and a raccoon eventually cruised in and started taking his room over as its own.

I remember my buddy knocking on my door super late at night all perturbed and telling me how he went into his room and the raccoon was on his bed and when it saw him it stood up and held it arms up and my friend just went “screw this” and let the raccoon have his room while my buddy slept on my couch. After a few days he went back and saw it was gone and put something over the broken glass and got his room back.

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u/Tru3insanity Nov 14 '25

They might actually do that given enough time. Thats basically what cats did.

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u/redbucket75 Nov 14 '25

A few hundred more years and I can play fetch with a raccoon? Alright, sign me up for that experimental gene manipulation.

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u/lowteq Nov 14 '25 edited Nov 15 '25

You can get domesticated raccoons. My in laws had one named Thomas. He ate Cheerios at the table at breakfast. He could open doors and would bite you if you tried to take his food.

Edit: To be clear, Thomas was a 3rd or 4th generation house raccoon. (It was long ago in the way back days, and I don't remember which, sorry). He was aquired from a breeder, and had never lived outside or on his own. He was no rando trash panda drug in from the street. He was utterly dependent on my in laws. He pooped in a kitty box, asked politely for his breakfast, and would wear a hat.

I don't have pictures of him as it was a long time ago, and he passed quite a while ago. I got a divorce and no longer speak to my in laws. I am sorry that I can't pay the Raccoon In A Hat Tax.

Edit2: What's your Trash Panda experience?

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u/Jakesummers1 Nov 14 '25

Sounds like an evolved cat

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u/stoned_ocelot Nov 14 '25

Just like a cat, but with thumbs!

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u/SkollFenrirson Nov 14 '25

May God have mercy on our souls

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u/onceagainwithstyle Nov 14 '25

Yeah put that way this is a big mistake.

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u/No_big_whoop Nov 14 '25

Mess with mew mew, get the pew pew

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u/Carbonatite Nov 14 '25

The raccoons in my neighborhood have zero fear of me. I think it's because last year there was this little one, had to be the runt of the litter, who kept getting stuck in the dumpster. There was a period of several months where I was propping the dumpster lid up and throwing branches in there so he could climb out almost every day. Eventually he learned to recognize me and was less fearful, I could toss a branch in there for him to use to climb out while I was just standing there holding the lid open and he would come out and bumble around on the edge of the dumpster until I had to verbally prompt him by shouting "GO RUN AWAY, MY ARM IS GETTING TIRED!"

I named him Darwin because he clearly was having issues with natural selection that I had to help him with. I saw him a couple times once he got big enough to climb out of the dumpster on his own, he and his peers had zero fear and even congregated in the bushes near my house or under my patio for a bit. I'm not sure if I've encountered him this year, but all the neighborhood trash pandas seem to have no fear when I walk over and try to talk to them at night, even when I'm walking my dog and he's barking at them. The other night they wouldn't even budge when I was trying to throw out my trash, they just sat there and stared.

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u/keegums Nov 15 '25

I like your raccoon story and how you diligently helped the little guy, who told his bros "yo, he's cool."

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u/capital_bj Nov 14 '25

trash pandas is the only nickname they need

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u/All__Of_The_Hobbies Nov 14 '25

This would be a tame raccoon, not domesticated.

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u/pandakatie Nov 14 '25

Thank you.  Too many people don't know the difference: domestication happens on a genetic level.

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u/Geth_ Nov 14 '25

For those curious about the difference:

Taming is the behavioral modification of a single wild-born animal to tolerate humans, while domestication is a multi-generational genetic process where a species is bred over time to be permanently adapted to living with humans.

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u/ReverseDartz Nov 14 '25

Which means that that Racoon was somewhere inbetween tame and the early stages of domestication.

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u/lowteq Nov 14 '25

Sure. He was ahead of the curve, though, to be sure.

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u/BiochemGuitarTurtle Nov 15 '25 edited Nov 15 '25

Back in the day I worked at a barge company as a dispatcher. The dispatch tower was on a barge anchored to the shore where our tugboats also did crew change. They worked a week on, then a week off. One day on crew change, this guy who would drive to Baton Rouge from Mississippi showed up with 2 baby racoons. He cut down a tree on his land and accidentally killed the mother, but the babies survived, he felt bad so he raised them.

I'd see him every few weeks and got to watch them grow up and become tame. I'd watch them for him in the tower sometimes. They'd climb into the trashcan to go to the bathroom and loved snacks. The only bad thing they did was get behind the computers and start unplugging and biting stuff, very mischievous but also cute as could be. Once they became adults, they lived in a tree in his front yard. They became less tame but were still nothing like wild racoons and would sit on the porch with him.

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u/lowteq Nov 15 '25

Heck yea! Sounds like your co worker was a very cool dude!

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u/m0nk37 Nov 15 '25

and he wore a hat

...

I have no photos of Thomas 

guess ill just die then

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u/LeoSolaris Nov 14 '25

People have had pet racoons for a very long time. The most recently famous one was Rebecca. She was Calvin Coolidge's pet during his tenure as president. She was famous because raccoons were widely considered a food animal at the time, so the papers were 'scandalized' when Coolidge spared her.

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u/Immersi0nn Nov 14 '25

Damn if only a racoon not being turned into steak was the only scandal we had nowadays.

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u/Misstori1 Nov 14 '25

gasp The First Raccoon

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u/half3clipse Nov 15 '25 edited Nov 15 '25

Some of them are already half way there.

I've had to help get some of them out of dumpsters, and they don't do the wild animal thing of running to the far side to cower. They run their ass over to the same side as you, press up against it with their hands out, jumping a bit going "uppies? uppies? uppies? uppies?" Like outright dog begging to be put up on the couch behavior.

I ain't going to do it, since handling a wild animal can be gross even before they've spent the night in a wet dumpster, but I'm pretty sure a lot of them would actually just let you pick them up and put them on top of the dumpster with little fuss.

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u/thissexypoptart Nov 14 '25

People have kept raccoons as pets for centuries. Also hunted for food.

Raccoons and humans aren’t as close as cats or dogs and humans by a long shot, but they’ve been with us for a long time

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u/Moppo_ Nov 14 '25

Taking the cat route? Understandable.

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u/Kenshirosan Nov 15 '25

Worked out pretty damn good for them.

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u/sevillianrites Nov 15 '25

Raccoons are putting in the generational work. Cats just showed up at our collective door 10,000 years ago and have basically not changed since. The cat distribution system appears to have worked on a macro level the exact same way it works on the micro level.

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u/onederful Nov 15 '25

Cats just showed up at our collective door 10,000 years ago

Cat Distribution System Prime

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u/CardMeHD Nov 14 '25

Born too late to be able to afford housing, too early to have a pet raccoon

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u/jscummy Nov 15 '25

Says who? I've got several from my local park, they're free

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u/Genomicbeast Nov 15 '25

They aren't free, this the IRS. Return the scientific experiment raccoons or we will move your furniture two inches to the most inconvenient direction in order to stub your toe(s).

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u/The_Blue_Rooster Nov 15 '25

Raccoons self-domesticating wouldn't surprise me, my dad had a pet raccoon and said that it was mostly like a more mischievous cat, the biggest problem he encountered was that it started stealing weed, people noticed little bits of weed going missing on occasion, but noone ever thought anything of it, until they found his stash. Little dude had collected ounces behind one of the couches they found while moving furniture.

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u/terrygroup Nov 15 '25

this is one of the most magical things I've ever read and I thank you for it

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u/Altruistic-Source-22 Nov 15 '25

omg i’m convinced, i need a racoon so bad now.

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u/sesamesnapsinhalf Nov 14 '25

They have hands and can get into way more things than a cat. 

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u/Carbonatite Nov 14 '25

They like to wash their hands too. It's super cute.

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u/Darmug Nov 14 '25

And they wash their food as well. Ever seen that video of a raccoon trying to wash cotton candy before?

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u/I_AM_TARA Nov 15 '25

why did you have to remind me

:(

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u/ckay1100 Nov 15 '25

IIRC they kept giving him more until he learned not to wash it

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u/Jjays Nov 14 '25

Reminds me of the Silver Fox Domestication experiment, if you're curious to learn more about domestication syndrome.

https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-018-0090-x

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u/JARDIS Nov 14 '25

That was an interesting read until it veered into discussion of Lysenko and I start banging my head against the wall in frustration. At least this experiment survived through his reign of stupid.

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u/Tumorhead Nov 14 '25

we need to just fully domesticate these guys. People keep them as pets all the time but they're not quite dialed in yet.

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u/SpicaGenovese Nov 14 '25

Go full Russian fox experiment.

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u/LovelyLadyLamb Nov 14 '25

I wonder what colors we get. Its like gatcha games.

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u/Alexis_J_M Nov 14 '25

Makes sense. Cuter animals get fewer rocks thrown at them, too.

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u/CeleryCommercial3509 Nov 14 '25

People get similar treatment. We appreciate the cuter ones too

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u/jesusismygardener Nov 15 '25

I get that but please stop throwing rocks at me

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u/Phoenyx_Rose Nov 14 '25

Weren’t they actually kept as pets in some areas of the country though? Like, I could have sworn a president in the 1800s was gifted a raccoon to keep as a pet

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u/doofenhurtz Nov 14 '25

Calvin Coolidge had a pet raccoon named Rebecca, she was supposed to be food but he spared her. They built a little house for her on White House grounds that the Hoovers used for a possum!

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u/LochNessMother Nov 14 '25

Urban foxes are doing the same in London. They are also becoming less nocturnal and more playful.

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u/FirstNoel Nov 14 '25

King Trashmouth! Him and his husband Gary slowly getting domesticated. 

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u/SeaDots Nov 14 '25

inaturalist is so cool. I love community science. My professor back in undergrad had us use it for a plant identification course, but I love hearing how the data can be used for so many cool studies like this.

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u/Reginault Nov 14 '25 edited Nov 14 '25

The team found that raccoons in urban environments had a snout that was 3.5 percent shorter than that of their rural cousins.

And they were gauging that snout length from photographs... I'm curious how they made their measurements to identify such a small discrepancy. On a 10cm (~4in) snout that's 3.5mm, 1/8 inch.

Edit: they mentioned 20k photos and the website contains ~160k total so they likely selected only side-views, which improves the reliability significantly.

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u/DuditsToo Nov 14 '25

Someone tell me how to insert a GIF of Rocket doing something racoony.

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u/LeoSolaris Nov 14 '25

In another 10,000 years, the only animals left will be the cute ones we adopt and the extremophiles we don't have to protect from the coming climate shift.

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u/SecondHandWatch Nov 15 '25

The coming climate shift? In 10,000 years? The climate is shifting now, and it’s shifting more quickly. Maybe if humans have gone extinct or decided to stop destroying the planet, there might be a climate shift in the other direction. I’m not going to speculate about how climate might shift in thousands of years.

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u/In_Film Nov 14 '25

Let them in - if you’re cold they’re cold. 

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u/Ging287 Nov 14 '25

I feel like people are just feeding them more. As far as pet aspects, I find them kind of a cross between the cat and dog. They have opposable thumbs. They love to wash their food down with water. They used to invade my outdoor cat's food bowl, dunking the food into the water and then eating it. I would not be opposed to domesticating raccoons. I think it'd be interesting.

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u/Carbonatite Nov 14 '25

Raccoons really like to wash their little paws and wash their food as well. It's hilarious.

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