Raccoons Appear To Be Self-Domesticating Themselves In US Cities

Something’s up with raccoons. Scientists have recently reported that those living in US cities have evolved much shorter snouts than their rural counterparts, a sure sign that urban “trash pandas” have self-domesticated in response to human presence. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

Biologists from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock studied thousands of images of North American raccoons ( Procyon lotor ) captured in the US between 2000 and 2024. Using computer software, they analyzed the skull and snout size of the animals, comparing those living in cities to those in rural settings.

“I wanted to know if living in a city environment would kickstart domestication processes in animals that are currently not domes