New study suggests urban raccoons are becoming more domesticated. Could they be pets one day?

When most people think of raccoons, they think of city dwellers. The medium-sized, furry animals with distinctive mask-like markings and ringed tails are notorious for slipping out after dusk to rummage through trash cans.

But by natureCoons are not city creatures. They are native to forests and woodlands, where their omnivorous diet includes corn, nuts and berries, as well as insects, shellfish and fish.

They are also native to America and are found in all Canadian provinces except Newfoundland and Labrador. was reported theree too.

“They’re like little riddles,” said Christina Sluka, an ecology graduate student at the University of Wyoming.

“We don’t really know much about how they adapt to urban habitats,” Sluka said. Electric currentHosted by Matt Galloway.

IN recent study Researchers at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock have discovered that raccoons don't just change their diet. profit from human remains — life in the city may be gradually taming them. And the evidence could be right there on their not-so-innocent faces.

What does domesticating raccoons mean?

Domestication is a long process during which wild animaI'm gradually advertisingtend to live in close cooperation with people for food, labor, or companionship.

“Our common domestic animals, such as dogs, are very different from their wild ancestors,” Sluka said.

She said dogs began the process of domestication “somewhere between 30,000 and 15,000 years ago.”

So raccoon domestication is at a “very, very early” stage, Sluka says. who did not participate in the study.

In the study published in Frontiers in Zoology, leAdvertisement Author Raffaela Loesch and her team analyzed nearly 20,000 photographs of raccoons from across the United States, all of which were submitted to the public science platform.

Researchers have found that raccoons living in densely populated urban areas exhibit physical changes—most notably shorter snouts. The study recorded “a 3.56 percent reduction in the snout of rural and urban raccoons.”

Biologists have discovered that many animals follow a similar evolutionary pattern, where they developed traits such as a shorter snout, reduced amount of ear cartilage, loss of fur pigmentation, and a weakened fear response, all of which increased their chances of surviving alongside humans.

Sluka's work is similar to Lesch's. She loIt would be good to study museum specimens of raccoons dating back to the 1880s to study how the shape of their skulls changed as cities expanded.

She found that “some of their teeth are actually getting smaller compared to how many city dwellers are around.”

Albrecht Schulte-Hostedde, professor of biology and evolutionary ecology at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, who Also was not involved in the study, said these changes were consistent with idea known how to domiscegenation syndrome – “a set of traits that change when [animals] live around people.”

Physically, he said, urban raccoons exhibit what is called neoteny, which means they retain youthful characteristics into adulthood and behaviorally they become more tolerant of humans.

These results, Sluka says, are notable because domestication is generally thought to begin with the capture and selective breeding of animals. IN case of urban raccoons, hHowever, the process seems to started mmuch earlier and simply by living in close proximity to people.

“The interesting thing is that this means that we humans, even just existing on the landscape, have a pretty profound impact on the wildlife around us,” Sluka said.

“It’s just that our presence puts a certain selection pressure on these wild animals, which kind of pushes them to become [a] bmore suitable for living together with us.”

What will future raccoons be like?

When Sarah Time and her husband found a raccoon next to its mother, who had been hit by a car, they decided to bring the orphan home.

This raccoon, named Cheeto, is now one of three.saves America for America withep. like pets.

In Canada, ownership of wild native or exotic animals is generally prohibited by provincial or regional laws unless the owner obtains special permission.

“Unfortunately, all of our raccoons were orphaned for one reason or another, and we brought them in so they could have a chance to live a great life,” said Thyme, who lives in South Carolina, where no special permits are required.

Although Thyme shares many adorable photos and videos their raccoons onlineshe said they don't encourage others to adopt them.

“For most people, a raccoon would be a bad choice because they are high maintenance,” Thyme said.

Schulte-Hostedde also warns against bringing wild raccoons into your home because they can carry a variety of pathogens and parasites—including raccoon roundworm, canine distemper and rabies—that pose serious health risks.

“For this reason, I would never go near a raccoon.”“, – he said.

Sluka agrees and says it may be a long time before we can call these critters our pets.

“We're at such an early stage in this process that people are certainly not going to fully domesticate raccoons anytime soon,” she said.

However, both scientists they say theyintrigued by what they see.

Schulte-Hostedde says urban raccoons may be in the “early stages of some kind of evolutionary change consistent with the domestication process.”

“If you fast forward a thousand years and if cities still exist, you might find that urban raccoons look very different,” he said.