{"id":329990,"date":"2025-12-07T08:58:32","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T08:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/329990\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T08:58:32","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T08:58:32","slug":"new-study-suggests-urban-raccoons-are-becoming-more-domesticated-could-they-be-pets-one-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/329990\/","title":{"rendered":"New study suggests urban raccoons are becoming more domesticated. Could they be pets one day?"},"content":{"rendered":"

LISTEN | New study reveals effects of city life on raccoons :<\/p>\n

The Current17:59Raccoons: Pests or Pets<\/p>\n

When most people think of raccoons, they picture city dwellers. The mid-sized, furry animals with distinctive, mask-like markings and ringed tails are infamous for slipping out after dusk to rummage through garbage bins.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But by nature raccoons aren\u2019t urban creatures. They hail from forests and woodlands, where their omnivorous diets includes corn, nuts, and berries, as well as insects, clams and fish.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They’re also native to the Americas, and are found in every Canadian province except Newfoundland and Labrador, though sightings have been reported<\/a> there, too. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey are kind of like little enigmas,\u201d said Christina Sluka, an ecology PhD graduate student at the University of Wyoming. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe don’t really know a whole lot about how they’re adapting to urban habitats,\u201d Sluka told The Current\u2019s host Matt Galloway.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

In a recent study<\/a> from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, researchers found that raccoons aren\u2019t just changing their diets to capitalize on human leftovers \u2014 life in the city may be slowly domesticating them. And the evidence could be right there on their not-so-innocent faces. <\/p>\n

What does it mean for raccoons to be domesticated? <\/p>\n

Domestication is a long-term process during which a wild animal is gradually adapted to live in close association with humans for food, labour, or companionship.<\/p>\n

Our common pets, like dogs, are very different from their wild ancestors, said Sluka. <\/p>\n

Dogs, she says, began the process of domestication \u201csomewhere between 30,000 to 15,000 years ago.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thus, the domestication of raccoons is at the \u201cvery, very earliest\u201d stage, says Sluka, who was not involved in the study.<\/p>\n

\"AChristina Sluka is a doctoral candidate in the University of Wyoming’s ecology program. She studies how urban raccoons respond physically and behaviourally to living in the city. (University of Wyoming Museum of Vertebrates)<\/p>\n

In the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Zoology, lead author Raffaela Lesch and her team analyzed nearly 20,000 photos of raccoons from across the U.S., all submitted to a community science platform.<\/p>\n

The researchers found that raccoons living in densely populated urban areas show physical changes \u2014 most notably, shorter snouts. The study documented a \u201c3.56 per cent snout reduction between rural to urban raccoons.\u201d <\/p>\n

Biologists have discovered that many animals<\/a> follow a similar evolutionary pattern, where they developed traits such as a shorter muzzle, reduced ear cartilage, loss of coat pigmentation and a dampened fear response \u2014 all of which increased their chances of surviving near humans. <\/p>\n

Sluka’s work is similar to Lesch’s. She looks at museum specimens of raccoons collected as far back as the 1880s,\u00a0to study how their skull shapes have changed alongside expanding cities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She found that \u201csome of their teeth are actually getting smaller in relation to how many urban people are around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Albrecht Schulte-Hostedde, a professor in biology and evolutionary ecology at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ont., who also was not involved in the study, said these changes align with an idea known as domestication syndrome \u2014 a \u201ccollection of traits that change when [animals] live around humans.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Physically, he says, urban raccoons display something called neoteny, which means they keep juvenile features into adulthood, while behaviourally, they grow more tolerant of humans.<\/p>\n

\"AAlbrecht Schulte-Hostedde is a professor in biology and evolutionary ecology at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ont. He’ll soon be launching a project to study raccoon behaviour and physiology in both urban and rural settings. (Submitted by Albrecht Schulte-Hostedde )<\/p>\n

These findings, says Sluka, are notable because domestication is usually thought to start with humans capturing and selectively breeding animals. In the case of urban raccoons, however, the process appears to have begun much earlier, and simply by living in close proximity to people. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is interesting is that it means that we, as people, even just existing on the landscape, are having a pretty profound effect on the wildlife around us,\u201d Sluka said.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust our presence is working some natural selection pressures on these wildlife that are kind of pushing them towards being [a] better fit to cohabitate with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

What will future raccoons be like?<\/p>\n

When Sarah Thyme and her husband found a baby raccoon beside its mother, who had been killed by a car, they decided to bring the orphan home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That raccoon, named Cheeto, is now one of three raccoons the American couple keep as pets.<\/p>\n

In Canada, owning wild native or exotic animals is generally prohibited under provincial or regional laws, unless the owner has obtained a special permit. <\/p>\n

\u201cSadly, all of our raccoons were orphaned for one reason or another and we brought them in so they had a chance at living a beautiful life,\u201d said Thyme, who lives in South Carolina, where no special permits were required.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although Thyme shares plenty of charming photos and videos of their raccoons online, she said that they aren\u2019t encouraging others to adopt them.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor most people, a raccoon would be a poor choice because they’re such high maintenance animals,\u201d said Thyme.\u00a0<\/p>\n

WATCH | Find out where raccoons are popping up in the city:\"\"<\/p>\n

Raccoons in Calgary? You bet there are<\/p>\n

Turns out trash pandas are actually in Calgary, and one wildlife biologist says their numbers could be rising.<\/p>\n

Schulte-Hostedde also warns against bringing wild raccoons into the home because they can carry a variety of pathogens and parasites \u2014 raccoon roundworm, canine distemper, and rabies among them \u2014 that pose serious health risks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI would never ever go near a raccoon for that reason,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

LISTEN | Pet raccoon was a \u2018delightfully mischievous wee thing,\u2019 says listener:<\/p>\n

The Current4:09Pet raccoon was a \u2018delightfully mischievous wee thing,\u2019 says listener<\/p>\n

From unwelcome visitors to cuddly companions, listeners tell The Current about their unforgettable raccoon encounters.<\/p>\n

Sluka agrees, and says it may be a long time before we can call these critters our pets. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are so, so early in the process that certainly people are not going to have domesticated fully pet raccoons anytime soon,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Still, both of the scientists say they are intrigued by what they\u2019re seeing.<\/p>\n

Schulte-Hostedde says urban raccoons may be at the \u201cincipient stages of some kind of evolutionary change that\u2019s consistent with domestication.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you fast forward a thousand years, and if cities are still around, you may find that city raccoons will look very different,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LISTEN | New study reveals effects of city life on raccoons : The Current17:59Raccoons: Pests or Pets When…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-329990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}