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To: Diana in Wisconsin
Animals don't self-domesticate.

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.

50 posted on 06/11/2026 10:39:39 AM PDT by Ol' Dan Tucker (Beauty may be only skin-deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone. -- Unknown)
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To: Ol' Dan Tucker
That idea is not what's recognized today. Domestication can happen that way but none of the early domesticates show that.
Today domestication is recognized as a process called Mutualism. Mutualism is where two species start a kind of cooperation that benefits survival. Personally I don't see where raccoons are engaged in Mutualism. It looks more like parasitism.
53 posted on 06/11/2026 11:34:54 AM PDT by Varda
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