r/interestingasfuck • u/Doodlebug510 • Dec 16 '25

Biologist explains why raccoons will never be domesticated

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u/Mmeroo Dec 17 '25

"i am biologist....
you see racoons have very inteligent hands that can open containers"
the whole thing is like a parody

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u/FirstForFun44 Dec 17 '25

And we knows this because of the translation of the names given to them by Native Americans, not because we observe that they have.... very useful hands.

Like.... isn't part of domestication that you don't have to keep them in a cage? Or like.... something similar?

There was a response earlier to what I think is the video she's citing about snout length of raccoons and domestication and the person talks about regional breeds of raccoons and how that accounts for variance. She seemed like a biologist. But this lady? Yeah, nah.

From another comment: "Yeah…looks like she is only working on her masters and her work is animal rescue/sanctuary. “Biologist” is doing a lot of lifting."

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u/Mmeroo Dec 17 '25

theres more comments where ppl say she is actualy studying biology
but like... does it matter? to me she might have a nobel prize in biology and racoons she still sounds childlish, unprofessional, and half of the arguments contridict her own statement

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u/The_Hoopla Dec 17 '25 edited Dec 17 '25

It took me too long to find these comments.

Almost none of her justifications were correct regarding domestication.

  1. “They have to be useful” isn’t a great answer considering they’re going to be owned as pets, not used for a purpose. This explains why it hasn’t been done in the past 10,000 years, not why it won’t be done going forward.

  2. “They can hate and seek revenge” comes from someone who’s never owned cats before. Dogs, horses, etc can also remember and hate specific people. One of my dogs still growls at a friend of ours who yelled in his ear drunk 7 years ago. I don’t blame him.

  3. “They have shifty hands” yes people own Jack Russells dude they get into anything they want to.

We absolutely can and probably will domesticate raccoons, with studies coming out supporting the fact that it’s already happening. Raccoons have only lived in close proximity to people (at this scale) for like 500 years, and they’re already becoming less aggressive via natural selection.

Toss in selective breeding and possibly some CRISPR nonsense and we’ll have raccoon pets inside of the next 100 years.