{"id":315985,"date":"2025-11-27T03:13:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T03:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/315985\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T03:13:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T03:13:10","slug":"urban-raccoons-may-be-on-the-path-to-domestication-study-suggests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/315985\/","title":{"rendered":"Urban raccoons may be on the path to domestication, study suggests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>UNDATED (WJAR\/CNN\/CNN Newsource\/WKRC) &#8211; Urban raccoons could be on the path to domestication, according to a recent study.<\/p>\n<p>New research indicates that raccoons living in cities are showing signs of becoming more comfortable around humans and could potentially become domesticated.<\/p>\n<p> An assistant professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock began exploring this possibility after observing raccoons scavenging trash cans on campus and appearing at ease in urban environments. <\/p>\n<p>Previous studies have shown that domesticated animals often develop features such as shorter noses, smaller teeth and curly tails. <\/p>\n<p>In this study, researchers analyzed hundreds of raccoon photos and found that urban raccoons have snouts that are 3.6% shorter than those of their rural counterparts. <\/p>\n<p>Comment with Bubbles<\/p>\n<p>BE THE FIRST TO COMMENT<\/p>\n<p>The professor theorizes that raccoons may be in the process of domesticating and could one day become household pets. The study is published in the journal Frontiers in Zoology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UNDATED (WJAR\/CNN\/CNN Newsource\/WKRC) &#8211; Urban raccoons could be on the path to domestication, according to a recent study.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":["post-315985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}