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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

#151

Post by dhosek »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #24
cinntaile wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think dogs in general are smarter than cats.

Dogs are certainly better at looking intelligent. I think dogs, being a more social animal, are more eager to please, and so are willing to be trained. 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 standi…

I had a cat once who didn’t grasp the idea of a box having an inside. I used a cardboard box as a laundry basket and when folding laundry, I would ball pairs of socks and toss them inside the box. He always ran behind the box and couldn’t figure out where the socks went.

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#152

Post by dhosek »

mc32 wrote: post #19
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

Are they as randy in real life as Pepe lePew?

Only towards black cats with a white stripe.

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#153

Post by yabones »

zukzuk wrote: post #134
_the_inflator wrote: post #132

So Kassel, Germany, may have hope to be less harassed in the future? 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…

Toronto, Canada is hands down the raccoon capital of the world. Something like 100k raccoons live in the city. 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 ou…

All you need to know about Toronto is that the generational effort to build a raccoon-resistant trash can has failed every time. They're unstoppable beasts!

Example: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/raccoon-resistant-bin...

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#155

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

#156

Post by bc569a80a344f9c »

zygentoma wrote: post #141
_the_inflator wrote: post #132

So Kassel, Germany, may have hope to be less harassed in the future? 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…

> Yes, it is of course in Germany forbidden to kill an invading predatory species - even on your property. This is Germany 2025. 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 th…

The second link parent posted literally explains it, which makes their "oh no, German in 2025 so broken" quite puzzling:

> 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.

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#157

Post by hyeonwho4 »

NalNezumi wrote: post #145
gyomu wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the anime was so popular it led to raccoons being imported en masse to Japan and becoming an invasive species when their owners released them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rascal_the_Raccoon#Impact

I learned about this 2 years ago when a racoon showed up in Tokyo close to where I lived. [1] 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) [1] https://youtu.be/P2yDY5HlUBw?si=YP_Bkd_oQZ86YOHt

There use to be "Raccoon cafes" in Seoul. You go buy a drink and pet the raccoons. IIRC animal cafes were banned around 2019 or so.

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#159

Post by BeFlatXIII »

lagniappe wrote: post #147
SpaceL10n wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, if you take something away from me that's mine, there's not much difference between the raccoon and myself.

You should work on that.

Why promote such a loser and defeatist attitude?

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#160

Post by IAmBroom »

shawn_w wrote: post #111
riffraff wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :(

Rascal: A Memoir of a Better Era. I had that book as a kid. There was a live action Disney film of it; didn't know about the anime version. Neat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rascal_(book)

A generation of us grew up deeply coveting a pet coon, and have never given up on that dream, really...

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.

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