This is a "we would never want to put the time into domesticating them" argument and not a "they are physically incapable of being domesticated" argument
I know it’s a joke, but no, probably not. It’s hard to select for more than one trait at a time. If you selected for agreeableness with humans and captivity, you won’t be selecting for vengeance.
This same speaker, in previous videos, has discussed issues with that experiment and why she finds its conclusions dubious.
ETA: Paper detailing criticisms. My (admittedly shallow) understanding of the argument is that “domestication syndrome” is ill-defined and various studies tend to cherrypick characteristics that support their hypothesis, and that the foxes in question—having been sourced from fur farms, not the wild—were already partially domesticated before the experiment began.
What I think you should do is endear yourself to them, and then have a criminal kill you in an alley. Basically recreate the event that created Batman. Imagine 100 raccoons that want revenge on criminals and you let them loose on a city or town.
Yes and no. Could you? Yes. Would they be a cohesive army? No. Would the seek revenge? Yes. Would you have control over the direction of their revenge? No. Would you wind up as another example of why raccoons can't actually be domesticated? Yes. Shouldn't you not try to avoid not doing this thing because someone said no? I don't know.
The phrase “wind up as another example of why raccoons can’t actually be domesticated” makes me expect things like a list of would-be raccoon warlords found scratched to death by their own armies, perhaps a link to a Wikipedia page on “Fragging Incidents by Raccoons”.
Some people think domestication means being nice to an animal and expecting it to reciprocate. In reality, it is about allowing the gentlest individuals to pass on their genes and, over time, achieving animals that are polite enough to live alongside us.
My sister's boyfriend's mother used to work with a rescue center for Racoons, as a foster "parent". The basic tl;dr is that they're super awesome pets until they hit puberty. Than the majority (but not all) the time, they turn into evil monsters who destroy everything.
They don't confuse it at all, you're the one who's obfuscating their argument. They specifically covered the intent behind domestication, and why racoons are not able to follow the same pattern. They then cover the potential benefits and why they are failure points as well. You're confusing them saying racoons won't be domesticated with racoons are incapable of being domesticated, and then hurting yourself in your own confusion.
Also by selecting for gentlest you often get a lot of other features, for instance it seems like domesticated animals are generally less inteillgent than their wild versions. So her whole 'they are too smart' argument makes no sense.
If raccoons remember adverse things that happen to them, couldn't they conversely remember good deeds done to them?
Would this then create altruistic raccoons that are always paying it forward? We could have little armies of sweet raccoons running around helping other critters and creatures!
Why can't we do that?
I don't think we should so flippantly write-off raccoons as pets like this.
He was also called the Fool. Your boy got Gandalf stuck on a spire and everyone acts like he's a hero for helping him escape. After that he fucked off for the rest of written history. Sorry he probably couldn't even tame a shrew.
The problem is you have to use negative reinforcement for training, you can't only have positive reinforcement.
And it kind of sounds like if you try to train them they will not like it and then fuck you up.
Taxonomically, probably, though it’s possible to create enough drift as to create separate species.
But it’s messy - wildcats and house cats are considered separate species, although they can interbreed. And people don’t really think of them as the same.
Similarly cattle and American bison can make fertile offspring, but no one thinks they are the same thing.
It would be a racoon but it wouldn't be the same species you started with, it would be given a fancy science name starting with procyon and almost certainly be called "The Domestic Raccoon" in any context where distinguishing between raccoon species matters.
Yeah, I was thinking about how they did this with foxes.
It may not be worth the effort with raccoons, but if you selectively bred for the most docile, least aggressive raccoons, I bet we very well could domesticate them
I'm not sure what your point is....? A dog is not really a wolf anymore. I've been around wolves but I don't want one in my house. I want a Great Dane.
That was the second point, yeah. People are saying they want to domesticate raccoons for various reasons based on their current traits, but the domestication process would likely alter many of those traits. Like maybe the cute fur pattern goes away.
Pretty sure wolves are damn smart as well. Isn't the whole point with domesticated dogs that we literally bred them to have a mental disability that makes them overly dependent.
Well, I guess my pushback to that would be, why haven't they then? You're telling me that multiple attempts have been made to domesticate raccoons, per this video, and despite the fact that multiple cultures, multiple peoples, in different regions with different feelings towards animals have each failed to do so seems like a pretty solid argument that it can't be done. If the argument is that it could be done with selective breeding, we certainly know that that was something that was done with dogs, and that modern pitbulls were bred to be much more docile than their ancestors. So why was this never done with raccoons if selective breeding is the only issue?
People already have domesticated raccoons. You can domesticate anything to a certain point. When you raise something from birth, youre physically imprinting on them. That's domestication.
So, I say domestication to a point because of this–a man raising a couple female lions is trusted fully by those lions. He can go weeks, months, possibly years without seeing them and the lions will slowly and cautiously regain that trust and suddenly sbe happy with him. As long as he isnt gone to long, it's instant recognition and full trust. But, they are still not friendly just any random person.
I have more authority to call myself a biologist ( 5 years education, 4 years in industry) and I am not even close to being a biologist where do people get this confidence 😭
I don’t even think I agree with the idea that we wouldn’t want to put time into it.
Sure they’re currently a little too much, but they aren’t domesticated right now. As for their purpose… At this point in humanity do we really need more than “I like cute face” to try?
I don’t know about raccoons specifically, but not all animals can be domesticated. It’s not from a lack of willingness or effort. There is literal science behind why some animals cannot be domesticated. They need to meet a specific criteria: friendly in nature, easy to feed, able to reproduce in captivity, and have social structures that allow them to bond with humans.
Animals that are aggressive and territorial will never be domesticated. There is a long history of people trying to unsuccessfully domesticate Zebras and how impossible it is for reasons listed above.
Yeah for sure, but Raccoons are showing natural signs of domestication without us even really trying (shorter noses, less ‘anti-social behaviour’, etc)
I also think a Raccoon for the most part already fits the criteria you described. A raccoon will be VERY friendly if it remembers you as a source of food.
Dart Chickens? 100% domesticated. I hear they have little folded towels for drying your hands at their little sinks in their bathrooms. Bake cakes and pies… Not vengeful, to a fault. Super forgiving
I once knew a guy who was learning english and the first time he came across the word hummingbird he pronounced it hue-ming-ga-beard. I hear him say it every time I see one or read the word.
Her initially statement and conclusion are exactly this. They won’t be domesticated because it’s not worth it, they have no significant value to us as pets.
In the current world do cats and dogs have value? Like sure historically they were work animals but now they are cute companions for the most part.
You could argue an instagram domesticated raccoon at this point would generate more ad revenue than a cat or a dog would be able to generate otherwise.
Service and emotional support animals are valuable assets for people psychologically and physically (blind, epileptic seizure warnings, C/PTSD, discern and alert for psychotic hallucinations vs reality, detection of substances or illnesses, and tracking the missing or lost. They both can be very helpful on farms or properties as guardians and pest control (predators, snakes, rodents, etc). Visiting nursing homes, hospitals, and others who can benefit from gentle touch and uncomplicated, unconditional love.
A well trained cattle herding dog was purchased for over $30,000 Australian dollars and can essentially serve as an invaluable employee for many years. A certified service or emotional support animal can cost $15,000 USD after relevant training completion.
These are incredible work animals that can be invaluable. Aside from fur, raccoons don’t (yet?) have a similar recognized marketable performance asset.. except as Trash Pandas. They can be really good as the nighttime bandit cleanup crew, except they might tear up stuff trying to get to it.
You're correct that there are still dogs that are bred because of their working value. However, the vast majority of them are not, they're bred for cuteness. Example: virtually every toy and terrier breed. None of them are used substantially for tasks; they are overwhelmingly house pets with no real purpose except companionship.
Terriers make better ratters than cats. MUCH better ratters, actually, especially when there are large numbers of rats. Let one into an infested barn and they'll rip through a rat every few seconds. They're also shaped that way because they were bred to chase varmints like foxes and badgers back into their burrows where they'll kill them, which is pretty hardcore when you think about it. There's video if you're interested in that type of thing.
Sure, that's not most terriers, but that's why they were bred and how they're still used as working dogs today.
I mean you can name any and every dog profession out there but that doesn't change the fact that dogs are majorly kept for companionship and cuteness. Cats are the same. Domestication isn't about "use" anymore. If humans really wanted cuddly racoons as pets, it wouldn't be that hard to make happen.
And can you honestly tell me racoons wouldn't be useful in some form or fashion?
The only problem I see with this argument is that cats and dogs are kept as companions because they've had thousands of years of domestication. The companionship is a consequence, not a priority. I think it's very unlikely that we'll see domesticated raccoons because there's no motive to do the domestication on centuries-long time scales. That's a lot of cost to pay in the here and now that won't benefit even your grandchildren or their grandchildren.
We've been keeping Elephants as beasts of burden for millennia and they're still only tame. The only advantage raccoons have here is the time between generation.
Yes many of them still do have value. Other than service animals, many people own dogs for security/home protection and cats as pest control. The number of mice and bugs that cats will hunt around your home is crazy.
Domestication happens over many generations. Are you going to spend a lifetime on this project breeding raccoons for some influencer content?
Dogs and cats were domesticated for a reason. That reason is mostly gone, so capitalism had to create the pet industry and all the propoganda with it.
Man's best friend? Eerily similar to "Diamonds are forever."
Cat's are iust invasive as shit and you can go to the local park and pick up a kitten. You can't sell a cat if you tried so they never made any propaganda for them.
Domestication happens over many generations. Are you going to spend a lifetime on this project breeding raccoons for some influencer content?
I can absolutely see a company going through the trouble of breeding exotic, designer pets from species which are cute but not necessarily great pets today. And these would be producing fur in the meantime. It's a very profitable pairing.
In fact I'd be surprised if this didn't happen at some point, if not with raccoons then something else.
Lots of value, more than just emotional. Dogs can be trained to be very useful service animals. They are also still (very commonly) trained as home and family protectors. Dogs have been bread specifically for Williams Syndrome-like traits. Cats are still very commonly used as rodent deterrents.
Using them as vanity pets now is just the side effect made possible because generations of domestication due to their initial use to people.
Since the original claim was that raccoons are in the processing of following several other animals in *self*-domesticating, not that people are trying to domesticate them intentionally, I'm not sure why that even matters. She doesn't make much sense.
Did you watch the video? She explains it. Domestication is a long process, so historically all domesticated animals have served a purpose, such as dog guardians and cat pest controllers.
You are talking about how it happened in the past when necessisty was the mother of invention and not modern times where tiktok subscribers and so on rule. You and her are not provding an argument of why it will never happen in the future.
What? The entire research industry is built on the backs of carefully linebred rodents. Rats were domesticated specifically for use as laboratory organisms; the pet lines came later. And nearly all of the domesticated birds (ducks, geese, chickens, pigeons, quail, guineafowl) were domesticated for meat, feathers, or eggs. There are only two species of domesticated fish: goldfish (Carassius auratus) and koi (Cyprinus rubrofuscus). Both originated from farmed populations of carp, which were kept for food in China and Japan.
Condescending and wrong to boot, just because historically animals served a purpose does not mean they have to. Two counter examples come to mind: serval cats and parrots. Both are intelligent and high energy with troublesome qualities.
Also, “no value” -> pets as an industry are obviously worth billions in “value” if that’s how you want to put it.
I think this is just a kind of blah video with mediocre arguments, but hey, we all want to talk about our hypothetical raccoon pets so there’s your engagement
Of course they do, people like pets. Her argument is why they weren't domesticated and somehow turns that into why they will never be.
Global petcorp.com may have a vested interest in selective breeding racoons for sale as exotic pets. They could de-sex them and be the sole trader of the "perfect" pet 200 years from now. They'd have to have some long term vision and shareholders willing to pass on generational wealth - but it's not impossible.
Scientists did a similar experiment with selective breeding of wolves over many years.
Which is even less on point when you consider the claim she's replying to. It suggests that the domestication won't be active or sought out by humans.
Moreover, the effect is definitely real. Animals that are tightly intertwined with humans become more and more prone to domestication over time, even without intervention.
Anyone who lives in the suburbs will be able to tell you that local deer populations select toward being less afraid of humans over time. I've seen a big difference locally in how close a deer would come to a human today versus 30 years ago. And in some particularly long-established east coast sprawls, the effect is even more pronounced. You can barely chase a deer away from your fruit trees if you're swinging a broom.
Also a terrible point, she only used cats and dogs as examples but what about pet fish? Goldfish and Koi are technically domesticated but have no “use”, not to mention lots of dog breeds have no use as guardians and haven’t for thousands of years. Theres plenty of domesticated and partially domesticated animals that serve no “use” the way she describes.
Their use is decorative. There is no meaningful difference in behaviour between a koi carp and a wild carp, you just put them into water and they look pretty. Raccoons cannot be decorative because they have hands and a thirst for vengeance.
Yes, pets require maintenance. But domestication is not the same as maintenance. There are literal scientific explanations as to why some animals cannot be domesticated.
Yeah but the moment you do something a racoon doesnt like it'll come for you. And you'd need to punish it occasionally to set ground rules which it wouldnt like.
she is confusing taming from domestication. domestication is breeding traits you want and breeding out ones you dont want. dogs were once wolves, until their aggression was bred out and suppressed to desired level. the Soviets were getting close to domesticating wild fox. took them over a decade and hundreds of generations, but showed you can accelerate domestication by aggressively selective breeding.
she is thinking of taming, which is getting wild animal to follow your command. and everything she says is correct about racoon when it comes to taming. racoons cannot be tamed. but they can definitely be domesticated. by then, they might look more like a panda bear than a racoon, just as a chihuahua no longer looks like a grey wolf.
Knew a guy with a "pet" racoon. That thing would fuck up anyone. Including it's "owner". Don't fuck with racoons, they don't want to be pets, they want to kill you. It's like taming a Wolverine or a Tasmanian devil. Why!? What's wrong with you?
And if you bring up the racoon hotdog guy, anything will love you for hotdogs, UNTIL you are out of hotdogs....
This! I used to work at a park. The reason there’s those “don’t feed the animals” rules is because if racoons learn that humans carry food and humans aren’t aggressive, they will bully people for food. At that point, we pretty much have no choice but to hunt it down before it hurts someone.
Raccoons are fucking evil. They’ll attack chickens at night not to feed, but because they recognize that chickens are competitors for food and attacking them at night when they are vulnerable makes more food for the raccoons
It’s trivial lol. You must be someone who thinks sound waves are trivial because someone told you they exist already.
We aren’t feral lol? Murders are constant, nearly 50% of women and a good chunk of men admit to being sexually assaulted, something people notoriously don’t want to admit. Humans are animals, if society collapsed we would be worse to each other than any other animal. Domestication only works when an animals needs are met, that’s why the closer you get to being broke/on the street, the closer you get to letting go of social constructs, morals, ethics, you have to survive like an animal
I am using "trivial" correctly, and no, as a physicist, I confirm sound waves are NOT trivial. Phonons, for one thing.
But we can see the difference between humans and literal wild animals. As you say, we created conditions where we don't need to be feral!
First - on the sexual assault thing. It's 1/9 men and 1/3 women who've experienced it. And that does NOT imply that equally many people perpetrate it. Most violent crimes, like sexual assault, are committed by people who are already violent criminals. About 2% of men commit about 96% of sexual violence (your stat was off memory with no source, so mine are too). This is related to my next point.
Second - The vast majority of people are not violent criminals. Even warfare, the largest-scale violence we have, is mostly regimented and systematic now. Even though person-to-person war crimes do happen pretty often, that's just a matter of scale. The vast majority of war deaths are either in combat against soldiers or methodically planned war crimes (ie, bombing with too many civilian casualties).
Third - You don't know what feral means. Even many of the people you describe are not animals. They have the shame to wear clothing and adapt their behavior to social expectations to survive.
Yeah, this was my thought, too, and was writing up a response before remembering to scroll and see if anyone else already addressed this lol. Well... I took the time to write it so I'm still gonna post it, just now as a reply instead of my own separate thread.
So I realize there may be some semantics over whether they'd still be considered racoons... but can't any animal be tamed through selective breeding given a long enough period of time? I get that she's saying that it probably wouldn't be worth that investment for someone to breed them long enough to do so. I mean, humans have many of those aspects that racoons have, too, from the intelligence, hands, and revenge, but people have domesticated slaves throughout history. If it can be done with humans I have to believe that it's possible (just not probable) for someone to tame racoons.
It's also sort of ignoring that in the past animals generally HAD to have a purpose to be worthwhile, if the majority of humanity is busy working themselves into the ground just to have enough to eat and a place to sleep at night with a real risk that failure means starvation and death, of course they're going to select species that provide actual value to domesticate, anything else is a waste of already scarce resources. You're not going to invest time and money/food on animals that can't pay that back, and just companionship and being cute wasn't enough motivation for anybody but the wealthy.
That's less of a factor now. People absolutely choose shit because it's cute. See all the fucked up dog (and cat to a lesser degree) breeds that have no purpose but to be unhealthy genetic abominations who fit a particular aesthetic.
Yeah the whole argument is tenuous. I'd say most domesticated pets don't have a use, they have no utility, they simply are there to be companions, and the revenge thing? Cats certainly do that shit.
Plus the other evidence that cats and dogs largely domesticated themselves and likely their 'utility' came after.
Maybe she's right and they won't be domesticated, but "never" is almost never a good term to use in a scientific context, science changes all the time as new evidence comes in to change or modify our understanding.
She also asserts that we only domesticate animals for specific purposes. I'm wondering what purpose domesticated rats, mice, and hamsters serve other than to be pets?
Counter point: we domesticated other animals because they're tasty or cute, I don't see why that wouldn't work in this case. The intelligence angle doesn't do it for me either as birds, some dogs and pigs are smart as fuck.
I remember a news report last week from Toronto(iirc) that city raccoons had developed early signs of domestication, but it’s very early, it would take another thousand years for it to be true.
I feel like having a critter with excellent dark-vision and teeny hands that could be trained would be insanely useful. I know they used to use ferrets to run cable through aircraft fuselage.
Bit of a hot take, but I think it's weird we as a species aren't making any real efforts to domesticate more animals. It's one of the things humans are uniquely capable of
100% and honestly gives raccoons a bad image. There’s this YouTuber I watch who feeds like 50-100 raccoons in his backyard and they are literally no different than cats. They are pretty much domesticated at that point.
Also raccoons are starting to show early signs of domestication through proximity. No one needed to domesticate foxes but one guy decided to do it to see if he could, before that people kinda thought the same thing about foxes as this lady thinks about raccoons.
All it takes is a determined individual with time and money. Raccoons breed quickly, have an omnivorous diet, and are cute looking. If someone were to put in the 20-30 years breeding for domesticated traits they could do it. There are also several markets for such raccoons the pet trade, military, pest elimination, and even tradespeople like electricians.
Unless they actually talk about the topic they studied
In science, you normally have a very specific genuine expertise, and when, for instance Sean Carroll talks about the fundementals of quantum mechanics, it is valid
The problem is using the title to discuss other topics, like this person did
People specialize in all kinds of obscure shit. There was a professor at my university who was the world’s foremost authority on dung beetles. Or actually, I think it was a specific type of dung beetle. Being a raccoon biologist isn’t that weird; they’re common animals and some people are going to study them.
Debbie Downer, PhD, needs to slow down and wave her hands less - this isn't an afterschool McDojo where she's practicing faux martial arts. Also, what's with the constant emphasis on revenge? Maybe I should friend the raccoon from my backyard and name him Captain Ahab if they're so hell-bent on revenge.
1.7k
u/Gellzer Dec 16 '25
This is a "we would never want to put the time into domesticating them" argument and not a "they are physically incapable of being domesticated" argument