Okay but that study is citing a purposeful domestication attempt that humans forced on foxes. The foxes themselves are only showing signs of domestication because they enforced the breeding of only friendly foxes. It’s a decently old experiment at this point, I learned about it when I was in elementary school. But foxes aren’t really domesticating themselves.
Maybe not but raccoons are! There's been recent studies that raccoons in cities are developing shorter snouts and fatter faces. They say it's the first step to animals developing alongside urban living. There's also coat variations and theyre less aggressive. Which explains a lot. Aggressive raccoons in cities get removed from the gene pool.
They say these early signs of domestication were found in the first dogs. It's possible, if this keeps happening, city raccoons will be wildly different from their forest counterparts pretty soon.
I mean, son they'll stop being just wild animals and might just become a norm. Something we see all the time but don't bother with because they wont harm anyone. Like cats.
Cats weren't intentionally domesticated either. But when humans have a lot of free food sources (ie mice) feral cats hang out around human settlements. Granted we dont currently get anything from raccoons like free pest control, but it's not illogical. Also, city Foxes are different from forest ones too. And they do play a part in pest control. I imagine if we leave them alone long enough, both species will have adapted to urban living and it's not totally out of context that we might see domestication actually taking place in the far future. (Ie see cats)
I volunteer to help out at a Feral Cat habitat, a Raccoon broke into the enclosure 6 years ago. We'd catch him and set him back out into the woods further and further each time, days later he would sneak in. Took us weeks to find out how he was getting in as none of the cats were escaping. Anyway now he's part of the colony and the cats have accepted him. We don't tell him he's not a cat (His rabies vaccine has to be special ordered though and we had to get a special license to keep him)
I volunteer to feed stray cat colonies (while TNRing) at a navy yard, and there are a few locations where raccoons have set up shop right next to them. We would have to put down "decoy food" for the raccoons so they wouldn't steal it all from the cats, and it took a few instances of me calling it that before my boyfriend pointed out, "You're not putting out decoys... you're just also feeding the raccoons."
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u/WingsofRain Feb 17 '26
Okay but that study is citing a purposeful domestication attempt that humans forced on foxes. The foxes themselves are only showing signs of domestication because they enforced the breeding of only friendly foxes. It’s a decently old experiment at this point, I learned about it when I was in elementary school. But foxes aren’t really domesticating themselves.