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Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#101

Post by jb1991 »

I_am_uncreative wrote: post #100
tzs wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you are starting with a wild raccoon, get one from a population that is not in the eastern parts of the US or Canada and rabies is unlikely. 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.

Plus, there are vaccines to prevent it.

If you were talking about the rabies vaccine, for humans, that’s not really a normal vaccine for people to get. It’s not like getting the flu vaccine or the chickenpox vaccine or others, and they shouldn’t be lumped into that same category.

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#102

Post by [deleted] »

quadyeast wrote: post #45
fracus wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 10% of raccoons that expose people or pets have rabies I don't understand the language of this quote. What does it mean for an animal to expose people?

you would think that 100% of racoons that expose people to rabies have rabies.

[deleted]

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#103

Post by scotty79 »

forinti wrote: post #4
jakogut wrote: post #2

> 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. Hmm, so evolutionary pressure of existing around humans makes animals cuter. I wonder why we find these features endearing?

I would bet on Paedomorphism, because we find babies and puppies cute.

Experiment in taming foxes that relied on a single principle of selecting animals that react to humans with least fear and aggression resulted also in those morphological changes. I think it's more about selecting animals that retain youthful curiosity and other traits into their adult life. Youthful morphological features just tag along.

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#105

Post by scotty79 »

indoordin0saur wrote: post #33
tptacek wrote: post #14

If dogs started out as wolves and ended up as English bulldogs, imagine how stupid raccoons will eventually look.

Most cat breeds still look more or less like their wild relatives.

Cats aren't really domesticated. Out of many, many cat species we just found one that's well aligned with humans and it spread with humans to the whole world. No other cat species plays well with humans and none shows any signs of domestication.

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#106

Post by ExoticPearTree »

cinntaile wrote: post #17
inasio wrote: post #15

Skunks apparently make great pets (but need to have their stink glands surgically extracted), the pitch is smart like a cat but faithful like dogs

I think dogs in general are smarter than cats.

> I think dogs in general are smarter than cats.

This is exactly what a dog would say.

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#107

Post by Ccecil »

caymanjim wrote: post #66
nunez wrote: post #59

People have been trying to make the house raccoon a thing: https://old.reddit.com/r/raccoons 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.

They're pretty great pets. We had one for a while when I was a kid. Its mom got run over and we nursed it and raised it for a few months. Instinctively used the same litter box as the cats. Hung out on the couch sitting on my shoulder watching TV. Friendly and playful. Would follow people around and play with toys. The biggest challenge is that they basically have hands. He would climb up the kitchen cabinets, grab a…

A former girlfriend of mine had a picture of her mother holding a Raccoon. I asked her mother about it and she said that they lived out in the woods in Minnesota and they found it on the porch when it was a baby. The mother had died or something so they kinda raised it. It was free roaming in/out of the house but they could hold it and it would also get into their food. She mentioned one time it ate a bunch of mixed nuts...but didn't like one type so it left all those in the bowl. Another time it ate an entire pie...but left her one piece ("so she wouldn't get angry"). She did say it was never really a "pet"...more like a wild animal that sometimes acted like one. This would have been in the late 70s early 80s by my guess on her age in the pictures.

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#108

Post by actionfromafar »

I_AM_A_SMURF wrote: post #98
jakogut wrote: post #2

> 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. Hmm, so evolutionary pressure of existing around humans makes animals cuter. I wonder why we find these features endearing?

We're programmed to take care of (human) babies. That's pretty fundamental to our species survival. 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.

Put slightly differently, they look cute because we are all mammals and they are cute.

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#110

Post by callmemclovin »

riffraff wrote: post #88
caymanjim wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're pretty great pets. We had one for a while when I was a kid. Its mom got run over and we nursed it and raised it for a few months. Instinctively used the same litter box as the cats. Hung out on the couch sitting on my shoulder watching TV. Friendly and playful. Would follow people around and play with toys. The biggest challenge is that they basically have hands. He would climb up the kitchen cabinets, grab a…

There's a Japanese anime from the '70s called something like "rascal the racoon", based on an American book, which tells the story of a kid with a pet raccoon. I've wanted a pet raccoon since I saw this on TV in the '80s, and raccoons aren't even a thing in Europe :(

Well at least in Germany they are a thing - a quick google search says there's a population of >1 million raccoons in Germany.
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