The only thing keeping most of us from owning a raccoon is their reputation for being insane, rabid freaks. Other than that, they look tailor-made for domestication. They’re adorable little chubsters with cute little masks on their faces who have cute humanlike hands that they use to reach out for things, which seems useful from a purely practical, household-chore perspective.

That dream may one day become real, as urban raccoons are showing early signs of domestication, according to a research team out of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Detailed by Scientific American, a team led by biologist Raffaela Lesch collected nearly 20,000 raccoon photos from users of iNaturalist, a social network/science project that allows its users to log and share scientific observations. Lesch an

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