Posted on 06/11/2026 6:17:33 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
They're undeniably cute, but they'd also be a pretty annoying pet.
Last fall, a study of raccoons found that these city-dwelling trash pandas are beginning to look different than their rural cousins in the U.S.—they appear to be domesticating themselves.
It wouldn’t be the first time a wild animal species manipulated humanity for its own benefit. Dogs did it at least 14,000 years ago, discovering that befriending garbage-producing humans resulted in tastier, more abundant scraps and less arduous lives on their own. New genetic data indicates that cats feeding off the abundant rodents plundering human food stores domesticated themselves for similar reasons around 10,000 years ago.
Dogs and cats hanging around worked out pretty well for humans, too. The first dogs served as early-warning systems, protectors, and hunting buddies. Cats, on the other hand, helped keep food fresher and reduced the spread of disease. Over time, through a combination of natural selection and human intervention, they evolved into the cute and cuddly companion animals of today.
Could urban raccoons be headed down the same evolutionary path straight into the American home?
Raccoons as pets
With their expressive masked faces and dexterous little fingers, pet raccoons are already found en masse on social media: sleeping in open dresser drawers and picking Fruit Loops out of cereal bowls. But the algorithm only shows one side of what Lauren Stanton, postdoctoral fellow at the Schell Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, describes as “very active and intelligent animals with complex needs.”
Problem number one? Raccoons are nocturnal. They sleep in tight spaces during the day and venture out at dusk to forage, hunt, explore, and socialize across vast territories that can stretch as many as three square miles. And they don’t do it quietly. Raccoons have all sorts of vocalizations: purrs, chirps, hisses, and straight-up screams. A hollering, busybody raccoon does not a good night’s sleep make.
And then there are those paws which, despite a lack of opposable thumbs, are remarkably agile. A pet raccoon would be able to untie knots, unlatch locks, unscrew jars of food, and open doors in the middle of the night to let their wild compatriots in for raucous, sexy parties during mating season.
As highly-opportunistic omnivores, raccoons hunt insects, aquatic animals, small mammals, and birds. They also scavenge just about anything they can find. Not only would the food in fridges and cabinets fall victim to their nightly raids, they could never be trusted around a gerbil or bird cage—and god forbid there’s a fish tank around.
Nor would they discriminate about the water chosen for dipping their food, a common behavior which increases paw sensitivity while eating. Toilet bowl, sink full of dirty dishes, or that poor, beleaguered fish tank—it’s all the same to them.
Altogether, this web of destructive, innate behaviors is one that not even ongoing domestication would be likely to ever make compatible with the human home—not that people are likely to stop trying.
“I have talked to many people over the years who have attempted to own raccoons, and their story often ends the same: The raccoon got too difficult to manage and so they ‘released it back to the wild,’” says Stanton, a deadly problem for human-raised raccoons that never learned essential survival skills.
Domestication vs. Domesticated
The evolutionary path of virtually every domesticated animal has undergone “domestication syndrome”—a pattern of physical changes seen across diverse species that includes the development of floppier ears, flatter and rounder faces, and curlier tails over time.
A 2025 study of the snout-to-skull-length ratio of close to 20,000 images of American raccoons posted on the citizen science platform iNaturalist found the snouts of urban raccoons were 3.56 percent shorter than those of rural raccoons—possibly an early symptom of domestication syndrome.
But Stanton isn’t completely convinced that’s actually what’s happening in these urban populations.
“Although morphological changes might have a genetic basis, there are multiple reasons why such changes could occur,” she explains. “Changes in skull shape, for example, could be due to changes in an animal’s diet, since many urban species shift towards eating softer, carbohydrate-rich foods found in our garbage.”
Changes in urban raccoon behavior can’t automatically be chalked up to domestication either.
“If raccoons become habituated to people or learn to associate them with food, they might behave in a more docile or tame manner around people, but this does not mean that they are domesticated,” Stanton continues. Additional empirical evidence, including examination of the raccoon genome, is needed to know for sure.
Regardless, Stanton is adamant that there is no hypothetical future in which raccoons could realistically become good house pets.
“In my opinion, what makes raccoons so charismatic is their curiosity and unruly nature,” she says.
“If we attempt to strip away their wildness through ownership or attempts at domestication, then we may lose some of the qualities that make them so special in the first place.”
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I hope not for the racoons’ sake. Have you ever seen videos of racoons as pets? They are obese and lethargic.
I hope the alligators don’t try to domesticate themselves.
I worked for a number of years in an old steel mill located on a river. Never saw a mouse or a rat there the whole time.
But oh the raccoons! I usually took the night shift (pay differential). Those rascals would jump out of nowhere. Sometimes I think they did that just for their own amusement.
At least they wash their hands ,LOL
They’re a lot smarter than possums.
The bobcats around here seem to be on a path of domesticating themselves. There is a large overlap in behavior between them and the feral alley cats, some of which have domesticated themselves.
We’ve had ‘training raccoons’ through here. They lived a pretty good life, though they have their own quarters OUTSIDE.
‘Jennifer Cooniston’
‘George Cooney’
‘Rocket’
All have lived long, happy lives as semi-domesticated raccoons. We keep them around so the Treeing Walker Coon Hound pups can ‘smell’ them and figure out what they’re supposed to be tracking in the woods.
No critters were ever harmed.
One of my neighbors loves animals, so much so that he feeds the birds, feral cats, deer, and raccoons. He had a particular feral cat that he really liked. A raccoon made short work of that cat. Raccoons can be really nasty, I want no part of a raccoon pet.
We have a handful who live in the forest by our house and have decided we’re their humans. One of them, Gideon, was hilarious, used to high five me, and presented her pups to me.
The pups, Pugsley and Wednesday, are total magnificent b@stards. We love them, but they annoy us and constantly irritate our outdoor cats. They are good critters, though.
Pugsley is particularly annoying, but again — in a totally endearing way. They are scary smart.
It’s all fun and games until they miss a meal.
My uncle had a pet raccoon, they were friendly …up to a point
Man feeds 30 wild raccoons at once- they leave eventually (leave the area) and new ones arrive 5o take their places
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ziu2rrNS7S0
Lol loved that commercial. Here kitty kitty kitty.
A cop in the town I grew up in had a pet skunk that he let roam around in his squad car. Perps would get the shock of their life when thrown into the car lol.
The closest I got was a baby raccoon that used to come to the table under the library window for seeds and peanuts. When I opened the window to feed him bologna, he’d lean against the wall and reach up to grab it. Broke my heart when he stopped coming. Always worried something got him.
Night Visitors - Joseph Blanchard - Whimsical Foray
https://youtu.be/4Fz_w97bt4s
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