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 thought that Rocket raccoon would make a good neighbor. Wouldn’t worry about leftist slime getting near.
Cats, on the other hand, helped keep food fresher and reduced the spread of disease
—
Cats apparenly had built in refrigeration in those days and did double duty as physicians.
For skunks, I once played mariachi music on the radio 24/7 for 3 days straight, and he finally left without incident. He was hiding under our deck. That was probably 5+ years ago, and we haven’t had another skunk under our deck since then. Raccoons and possums once in a while. Last summer, something died back there but it wasn’t a spot we could access. So it stunk for days.
My daughter (the most compassionate one in the family) had a similar experience growing up in her teen years. She’d open the window and leave out food, then close the window. Then a racoon from the woods behind our house would come up and eat, but with a window between them.
I remember reading how the Russians had a breeding program to domesticate foxes and it turned out pretty well . We could do that with raccoons fairly easily since they are already pretty friendly animals
In Fort Lauderdale there is a large, wild, wooded park near the beach called Hugh Taylor Birch State Park. There is a gated entrance on the south side, near A1A, with a fire station next to it.
The firefighters decided, at some point, to feed the raccoons that live in the park.
Now it is a daily ritual with dozens and dozens of raccoons gathering at the south gate to get fed. Quite the site.
Herman Goring imported them to Germany and they got loose and Germany regrets this invasive species deeply. Same for Japan. Some show that had a Raccoon pet resulted in the import...and later release...of the aggressive "Pets" and they now run around tearing up Japanese Temples and homes.
I understand they make good coats though! (Cold places only! Do not wear in NYC!) Woman's Natural Vintage Raccoon Coat
Dogs and burly men like to chase them around forests and up trees I understand!
The overthrow is slow and will accelerate.
Look at the lands end catalogs. Bathing suits for Muslims are slowly being normalized
Domestication is a result of animal husbandry where the humans consciously only allow animals to breed that have desirable traits, such as gentleness and submissiveness.
Animals with undesirable traits are either killed or not allowed to breed, so those genes are not spread to successive generations.
This process requires many generations over hundreds or thousands of years.
Certain wild animals, such as parrots, have been kept as pets for a hundred or so years, but still retain all of the traits of their feral counterparts.
They are not domesticated, but have learned to trust, to a certain extent, the humans around them.
Was his name Pepe?
No, they are rabid scavengers.
I thought the foxes the Russians domesticated might make pets.
If you have a canine and a feline, why not add a vulpine?
Sadly, our cat never came back.
So I was thinking, why do large conduits are worth notice? But googling it and I see it is a restaurant chain. I doubt it tops The Big Chicken!
What in the retardation?
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