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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

#211

Post by Nevermark »

trhway wrote: post #137
EdwardDiego wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and I wish our country didn't have such restrictive biosecurity laws, because AWWW THEIR CUTE LITTLE HANDS.... (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.)

on the other side - if not for these laws, somebody would have produced a pet racoon breed in several generations, smth like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox#/media... ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox )

I want to breed octopus to live longer.

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.

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#212

Post by BeFlatXIII »

nunez wrote: post #65
cinntaile wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think dogs in general are smarter than cats.

Dogs and cats have different modalities for intelligence. 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…

I'll echo Sohcahtoa's sibling comment to yours, but with a different pair of species: horses and donkeys (mules count as donkeys for this one).

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.

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#213

Post by Xmd5a »

LandR wrote: post #150
jb1991 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is it not? 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.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TerrifyingAsFuck/comments/1kxxx8m/u...

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#214

Post by nickserv »

riffraff wrote: post #207
mamonoleechi wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Racoons are invading the north east of France: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2ijwZROb6g ; they are exotic invasive species: a female get 10 babies per year, and there is no predator

Aren't those the Asian/Japanese racoons (tanuki) rather than the American ones? 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

Yes, those are clearly American raccoons, not the Asian "raccoon dogs".

In the video it's mentioned they were unwillingly introduced by the US military, kept as pets by servicemen and escaped.

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#215

Post by nickserv »

Nevermark wrote: post #211
trhway wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on the other side - if not for these laws, somebody would have produced a pet racoon breed in several generations, smth like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox#/media... ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox )

I want to breed octopus to live longer. 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…

Death follows mating for the males and the eggs hatching for the females. Not an uncommon behavior, all sorts of plants (ie agave) and animals (ie salmon) have a similar strategy. Meaning the strategy works very well, and would likely be controlled by very different genes, depending on the species.

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.

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#216

Post by whynotmaybe »

yabones wrote: post #153
zukzuk wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I've seen people in Quebec eastern township lock their garbage bins with a padlock. Some "advanced" garbage bins come with integrated lock.

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#217

Post by whynotmaybe »

_the_inflator wrote: post #133
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.

Jep, just have a look here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45964090 It astounds me, that government still doesn't want to kill say 20k of these invaders.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45965985

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#218

Post by skeezyjefferson »

sdwr wrote: post #10
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 believe the main biological lever is retaining juvenile features as adults, physically as well as mentally (like with dogs). What we see as cute is an honest signal that they are more child-like: less aggressive, more trusting and pro-social.

animals werent kept as pets until recently - they were all (dogs, livestock etc, cats technically) working animals.

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#219

Post by skeezyjefferson »

IAmBroom wrote: post #173
burnt-resistor wrote: post #7

Foxes too, generally. The average temperament tends to include curiosity, playfulness, and wariness but not moral fear of humans. People keep them as household pets so I'd call that domesticable. An experiment to speed up the process of fox domestication was undertaken. [0] Foxes tend to not be like almost all wolves (and many wolfdogs) which are reserved, not prone to social openness, and hard to read like American…

What is "moral fear of humans"? As crepuscular animals, they are very, very afraid of humans.

from when a racoon is born, they are told that humans are evil. its obviously not true but the stereotype persists

Re: Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication

#220

Post by indoordin0saur »

scotty79 wrote: post #185
IAmBroom wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation required for claim that runs counter to most scientific evidence.

Sure thing. That one specific cat species was (and still is) Felis silvestris lybica. All domestic cats come from it and it's still the friendliest towards humans, out of all cat species. They still can and commonly bread with each other when they live in the same area. Some light reading: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ask-s... So, what was your evidence again?

Interesting. Thanks for sharing. But a counter hypothesis I have is that this might be from the wild population over time getting more interbreeding with escaped domestic cats, causing the apparently domestic behavior in the wild ones.
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