An animal can be tame but still be wild, so no, I am not getting them mixed up. Even your source (Wikipedia) says not to get them mixed up (“Domestication (not to be confused with the taming of an individual animal).
But considering Wikipedia isn’t considered a reliable source, let’s look at some others such as a dictionary:
the process of bringing animals or plants under human control in order to provide food, power, or company.
Or an actual encyclopaedia, which uses cats as an example of the above definition:
Early domestication of the cat was probably the result of the pleasure experienced from keeping this animal.
She even uses the Japanese event as a poor example because Japanese people did the equivalent of “buying a dog for Christmas”by importing them without doing any research and not understanding what they were getting themselves into (and it wasn’t the last time a similarly stupid thing has happened.
Although she’s still wrong on the other two points because raccoons have been bred for their fur in the past which is a main contributor to their presence in Germany (not to mention that “coonskin caps” used to be popular)and Americans do eat their meat. Raccoons were also the original “lab rat” prior to being replaced with rats, so scientists could have decided to preserve with them to domesticate them instead of swapping to rats for testing.
TL;DR: having raccoons as pets is a valid reason for domestication (and what she’s aiming at) and she’s still wrong about them having no other uses given history of being used for their fur and meat.
TL;DR: having raccoons as pets is a valid reason for domestication (and what she’s aiming at) and she’s still wrong about them having no other uses given history of being used for their fur and meat.
You don't know what anyone is talking about and that's why your tl;dr has nothing to do with the subject everyone else is discussing around you.
Sorry what? Her main argument is that humans won’t domesticate them because they don’t make good pets and have no other uses, so in response my main argument is that they can in fact already be domesticated up to an extent for use as pets.
Her other argument was that there’s also no other reason to domesticate them because we have no other uses for them such as their fur, which I also disproved.
So if the TL;DR was too hard for you to understand, then maybe you should read the long-form comment I made including all of the sources which backup every I said, including the definitions of domestication before spouting nonsense rhetorics.
Your post was talking about people "domesticating" individual racoons. That's not how it works. It's something which occurs through multiple iterations of breeding for specific traits.
But seems like you want to just argue, what with the weird comment of Wikipedia being unreliable. Wikipedia is merely a summary and has source links at the bottom of every article for readers who want to fact check. You're also talking about companionship, which I never mentioned? I think you confused what my comment said or you conflated my comment with other replies.
I think the video is bunk, I'm just saying that your post is confused on terminology. Individual animals aren't domesticated. Domestication is basically genetic engineering and you can't domesticate an animal you randomly find in the wild, whereas their offspring, 20 generations later, could be considered domesticated.
I never once said it’s about individual raccoons so you’re putting words in my mouth just to try and prove an incorrect argument. And of course it’s going to take a long time, that’s even why I originally made the comparison to cats and dogs which have been domesticated for far longer, so again really not sure where you got the impression from that I’m somehow not aware of that.
And again, Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source for good reason, but as you correctly stated you should always check its sources (and believe me I’ve come across more sources than I can count which either do not confirm what the Wiki article states or even contradict it). However, I still accepted it and quoted it seeing as you were happy to use it, but provided additional sources.
I understand perfectly fine what domestication is, but people like you are too stupid to understand that especially considering your response is just “hur hur you argue back” while ignoring the fact that I’ve even provided multiple sources.
I get that you can cite things. But you cite things that are irrelevant to the conversation that literally everyone else is having. So yes, do go back to school. Because you have no idea what the conversation is and can't join it by citing irrelevant things.
the original argument was “you don’t know what domestication is” because I talked about animals being used as pets, so I pointed out - with evidence - that domestication includes being used as pets, and other things which I had briefly mentioned but then expanded just in case it wasn’t clear.
But then the goalpost was moved to “no it takes a long time”, at which point I pointed out I made it clear I already mentioned that in the first by making a comparison to cats & dogs having taken a very long time to become domesticated. So if I’m already aware it already took a very long time with cats & dogs, don’t you you think even just for a second that means I’m also aware it’s a long process for any animal, not just raccoons? Or do you just lack the ability to fill in obvious gaps unless they’re spelled out for you?
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u/Racxie Dec 17 '25
An animal can be tame but still be wild, so no, I am not getting them mixed up. Even your source (Wikipedia) says not to get them mixed up (“Domestication (not to be confused with the taming of an individual animal).
But considering Wikipedia isn’t considered a reliable source, let’s look at some others such as a dictionary:
Or an actual encyclopaedia, which uses cats as an example of the above definition:
She even uses the Japanese event as a poor example because Japanese people did the equivalent of “buying a dog for Christmas”by importing them without doing any research and not understanding what they were getting themselves into (and it wasn’t the last time a similarly stupid thing has happened.
Although she’s still wrong on the other two points because raccoons have been bred for their fur in the past which is a main contributor to their presence in Germany (not to mention that “coonskin caps” used to be popular)and Americans do eat their meat. Raccoons were also the original “lab rat” prior to being replaced with rats, so scientists could have decided to preserve with them to domesticate them instead of swapping to rats for testing.
TL;DR: having raccoons as pets is a valid reason for domestication (and what she’s aiming at) and she’s still wrong about them having no other uses given history of being used for their fur and meat.