Are we making raccoons smarter? on CBS Sunday Morning

[question everything]

[Demovictory9]

1. interesting

[sinkingfeeling]

2. I loved watching them. I would sometimes find 5 or 6 on my back porch.

They would enter via the cat door.

[Gothmog]

3. Raccoons are very smart and great at breaking into things

There are some very fat raccoons at a local national park that are experts at breaking into ice chests and the camp storage boxes. A normal snap fastener is no problem. A padlock worked but we endedu storing the foot in the scout trailer with a padlock

One of the scout leaders made some non-fat pudding that the scouts and the raccoons refused to eat

[kurtcagle]

4. Raccoons, Cats, Corbids and Dolphins

One of the effects of domestication, whether intentional or not, is that animals who are not food stocks have become more human-like in their behaviors. This doesn't mean they are becoming "smarter" in any global sense, but it does mean that they are adapting towards living in human environments. Raccoons have a couple of added advantages - they are one of the few other species beyond primates to have opposable thumbs, they are omnivores, they are capable of standing (and occasionally walking) on their hind legs, and they have binocular vision. Raccoons and cats also have brains that are nearly as deeply folded as humans (dogs' brains are larger, but generally aren't as folded). When humans finally shuffle off this mortal coil, it will likely be raccoons, not apes, that becomes the next dominant intelligent species.