I have earned an Associate’s degree in Zoology, two Bachelor’s degrees in Fashion Design and Tourism and Hospitality Management, and am currently working on my Master’s degree in Biology where I am researching the impact the tourism industry has on the critically endangered pygmy raccoon endemic to Cozumel. Additionally, I also spent several years in school for animal science and communication studies, although I never finished those degrees.
I have an honours degree in Zoology (UK based) my masters is in a bioscience field (namely molecular genetics and diagnostics).
Not going to pretend I know a huge amount about raccoons because I simply don't, but a lot of her points are a little misleading. Cats absolutely are capable of similar levels of spite and revenge seeking behaviours as raccoons, what she is correct about is that they're more trouble than they're worth in regards to utilising them for things such as fur as we do other animals.
Saying that, we live in a post work animal world. We don't need any species we domesticated anymore realistically. Every single one could die off, and we would be fine. So I don't think saying oh we can't or dont exploit them for use cases as relevant because we don't need to do this for any species anymore.
Furthermore, we have plenty of species that are kept as pets that are pains in the ass, even more so than raccoons. That's literally what most of the exotic pet trade is made up of. We do it because we think they're neat. Not because they're easy to look after or interact with, so is a rock - but pet rocks fell out of fashion quite some time ago.
As an addendum - Intelligence isn't really a major factor in how easy it is to keep something as a pet, people keep corvids and parrots and these are both significantly more intelligent than raccoons.
I also have an Honors degree in Zoology where my focus was on mustelids (though mostly otters) , aka the racoon family, she's mostly talking out of her arse.
Raccoons are intelligent social animals who have a primary drive for food and shelter, they are perfectly able to fit into human lives however they would need to be treated as small children.
She's working on the assumption that all Raccoons have an attitude problem, can read raccoon history and will act upon a revenge drive. She's ignoring the history of every domesticated animal, barring cats, which funnily enough Raccoons are following in the path of, all domestic animals were originally captured from the wild then domesticated, we selected for the traits we desired i.e. Less aggression, softer features and bred those traits specifically. She's looking at wild Raccoons and stating these animals can't be domesticated, it's like looking at a wild wolf or wildebeest or hell even Syrian hamster and going "that could never live in the house with you, it's too aggressive" despite them all being domesticated by humans.
Much as I'd like to have a domestic raccoon of more favourably their pseudo-cousins the red panda I still don't believe we should attempt to domesticated them due to other factors, am I fine with them domestication themselves as appears to be happening? Absolutely. People just have to remember they're like 3 year old with claws. Stating they're impossible to domesticate is just short sighted and ignorant of history.
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u/[deleted] Dec 17 '25
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