The Intelligent Life of the City Raccoon

http://nautil.us/issue/18/genius/the-intelligent-life-of-the-city-raccoon

by dnetesn • 12 years ago

66 34 12 years ago

coldcode• 12 years ago

If they ever break in and take our weapons we are all in trouble.

2015 a mutant raccoon race with an opposing thumb paw gets an advantage with new garbage can design and spreads in Toronto. 2030 they routinely get into houses and hide to watch home owners to learn where they hide the key from the reinforced food storage vaults. 2035 all drones in the country are armed to shoot raccoons but they learn to steal human dress and so disguise themselves 2040 raccoons learn to read digits and open the codelocks. 2050 human race is fighting a survival war against raccoon armed with stolen arms and drones that got overzealous and confusing people for disguised raccoons.

Unfortunately I'm not Philip.K.Dick :-)

andrewd18• 12 years ago

2051: One brave racoon escapes from a human-controlled racoon detention and experimentation center. He steals a ship and heads out into the Milky Way.

2052: Rocket Racoon forms an alliance with a Flora Colossi named Groot.

seanalltogether• 12 years ago

I wonder what it is about his design that requires an opposable thumb? Maybe like a vertical rod you'd have to grip and pull down?

GuiA• 12 years ago

Likely a lid that requires pressure on two opposite faces to open- a bit like the kid proof pill bottles.

kijin• 12 years ago

Couldn't a raccoon work around that limitation by placing two paws on opposite sides of the mechanism and squeezing?

Unless the mechanism requires two hands with opposable thumbs (four points of pressure)... in which case two raccoons could work together and share the spoils.

viral_krieger• 12 years ago

Here's the design article.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/08/26/toronto_designer_...

mertd• 12 years ago

Lynne Sneddon of the University of Liverpool, for example, found that bold rainbow trout learn better and more quickly than shy ones.

Life lessons from a rainbow trout...

kqr2• 12 years ago

This article has a photo of the "raccoon proof" double latch design:

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/08/26/toronto_designer_...

It looks like you would need opposable thumbs to disengage both latches at the same time.

dllthomas• 12 years ago

You're ignoring the possibility of teamwork.

subdane• 12 years ago

Timely. A raccoon walked up to my stoop in Downtown Brooklyn last week. I've been there 19 years and have never seen such a thing and I thought to myself, how the hell does a raccoon survive in Brooklyn?

CaveTech2• 12 years ago

Raccoons are incredibly common here in Downtown Toronto. A friend of mine even had issues with them coming onto her 4th story balcony and throwing her flower pots to the ground below. They're also no longer scared of humans at all, and will either completely ignore you or become aggressive.

I think we'll have to start culling them within a few years, they're becoming an infestation and are simply too intelligent for their own good.

bluedino• 12 years ago

A few people catch and eat them in Detroit

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20090402/METRO08/90402039...

trhway3• 12 years ago

I think we'll have to start culling them within a few years, they're becoming an infestation and are simply too intelligent for their own good.

i wonder why we tend to treat that as infestation instead of celebrating that at least some wildlife is able to coexists with us. We lived in a house in Palo Alto and the big family of racoons lived under the house and on the nearby redwoods. It was pretty enjoyable and fun.

Ollinson• 12 years ago

I live in Queens near the Queens/Brooklyn border and see huge racoons frequently. If you live near freight train tracks they hang out there.

eternalban2• 12 years ago

+1! The one in our (Bushwick) backyard showed up last week. Have been here a few years and this is the first time I've seen such a thing.

carterehsmith• 12 years ago

Sprinkling the garbage bin with some bleach works well, raccoons won’t touch it, plus it may kill some nasty bacteria on/in the bin, too.

trhway3• 12 years ago

Even Toronto Mayor Rob Ford confessed to the media that his family was too frightened to take out their trash.

imagine the racoons after consuming remnants of crack in the Ford's thrash or the racoons on withdrawal looking for the next hit

goo• 12 years ago

A raccoon recently snuck into my apartment in the middle of the Mission in SF, and rampaged around the place in the middle of the night, ripping through bread and leaving a huge mess. My roommate told me that he chased it back out the window with a broom.

I was totally shocked, and thought that it must have been a one in a million event. Of course, it happened again.

I would say it was a nice taste of the wild in the middle of the city, but sweeping up the mess and wiping down all the paw prints was a huge pain. Nature never ceases to impress.

eternalban2• 12 years ago

There is this fellow who climbs down the old metal ladders we have in our backyard in Brooklyn. She comes down to help herself to the dry cat food. Really interesting eating habits: dips her fingers in the water bowl and then scoops up cat food with both hands and munches along. Then climbs back up to the tree and finishes it off with a few leaves of the Berry tree.

bitwize• 12 years ago

"What do you think we have these wonderfully articulated fingers for? To scratch our asses?"

--A raccoon, in the movie The Great Outdoors

chatwinra• 12 years ago

Not really surprising, given how much trouble they gave Cyril Sneer.

soylentcola• 12 years ago

Oh man...I had completely forgotten about that show.

gegtik• 12 years ago

My friend sprinkles crystalized coyote urine around his trash the night before pickup and it keeps them away

... for now...

pyre• 12 years ago

On the other hand, think about how coyote urine is produced as a commercial product. I doubt they just hire people to go collect it in the wild...

jackgavigan• 12 years ago

“They do go around trying systematically different things around that bin, they play until something moves and then they keep working at that,” Treadwell says.

That's basically fuzzing. They're furry fuzzers.

sea6ear• 12 years ago

Racoon Nation (PBS special) was pretty eye opening.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/raccoon-nation/full-...

whitten• 12 years ago

I wonder if a similar expansion and increase in intelligence is also occurring with opossums. I had several near my house in Houston, and even had one house invader that I found in my kitchen. After carefully moving it into a cat carrier, I helped the opossum find a new home about a mile away at the bayou.

chrisbennet• 12 years ago

Raccoons carry a virus [Baylisascaris procyonis] that is especially bad for humans. [1] Be very careful when cleaning up area's that may have raccoon feces such as near trash cans. By careful, I mean don't inhale the dust from aggressive sweeping, leaf blowing, etc.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baylisascaris_procyonis

The Intelligent Life of the City Raccoon

Related Stories