https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/raccoons-are-showing-early-signs-of-domestication/
Omg this makes me so happy
>>5073303Not sure how to feel about this. Domestication verifiably makes animals dumber and one of the great things about raccs is their intelligence
Explain domestication lore to me. How is a shorter snout a tell tale sign of becoming our pet?
Even without trying, the evil aura that surrounds every human SMASHES and SLAMS species that used to be pure.
>>5073560It's domestication, not humans. We are suffering from it too.
>>5073525have you ever actually met one? they're not all that smart, it's like watching a retarded person come to a decision.>>5073564are human noses getting shorter?
>>5073567Our faces are flatter and our jaws are smaller than our ancestors
>>5073547It is something that just happens when you select for tameness for some reason. It also happened in the fox experiment
>>5073547creatures with long noses tend to rule over other creatures with shorter snoots.
>>5073614>for some reasonShorter snout is a neotenous trait, same as tameness
>>5073547>>5073567>>5073603our jaws/mouths are getting smaller because we eat softer food.
imagine the obesity...is it even possible for their metabolism to adjust quickly enough ??
>>5073564Ayys domesticating human cattle
>>5073303This seems like popsci bullshit but it's not completely implausible. City animals that are anti-social are more likely to act out against humans which gets them animal controlled. Meanwhile animals that are tame are probably more likely to get food scraps from people.>>5074033Signs of self-domestication has been observed in several species such as bonobos. The theory is that selecting for pro-social behavior forms a feedback loop with anti-social members of a species getting killed or kicked out for not cooperating. Modern humans also show signs of self-domestication with us having smaller relative brain sizes than our bronze-age ancestors, and while this isn't quantifiable we also seem to be a lot less violent, and I wouldn't be surprised if newer generations looking younger was also a result of neoteny from self-domestication.
>>5074062zoomers are aging the worst of any generation who ever lived
>>5073303This is how we get a lot of our domestic animals. They’re pests/food until they adapt well enough to us that a minority of them isn’t worth killing. Pretty soon you have pugs, dumbo rats, and those weird boogle eyed goldfish.
>>5074137its definitely how we got cats and maybe chickens (land seagulls) but afaik >cavemen reared wolves before they had dogs and while the domestication line is blurry the continuous cohabitation is clear. wild wolves are notoriously easy to tame if hand raised and are only dangerous to strange adults and other animals. not a problem for family tribes. >wild horses are easily tamed and kept captive>ungulate livestock came from purposefully captured herds after humans had already domesticated other animals and noticed heritability
>>5073525"Intelligence" is neither black or white, nor a simple sliding scale between "smart" and "dumb". Dogs for example are smart in ways that wolves absolutely are not, and Humans (who also show signs of domestication) are smart in ways that Neanderthals never were.
>>5074144Yah. There are definitely cases of more deliberate domestication, but especially with animals a good many happened as a result of purely natural processes. Or, at least partly natural. I’m a big fan of the concept that dogs started off as scavengers that adapted well enough to us that we started keeping them. Though the more direct path of people just keeping wolves for their utility is also possible. Meh. I’m cool with domestic raccoons. In 1,000 years whatever the Jupiter moon colonies version of /an/ is, it will have dueling threads about how much people love their lil fuzzy ring tail bandits, versus how much better cats/dogs are than trash pandas.
>>5073303I raised one that learned how to wave and say 'hi' as a greeting. they are pretty smart.
>>5074176>learned how to wave and say 'hi' as a greetingevery fish can learn simple stuff
Domestication and evolution are separate things.
>>5074196You misunderstand what evolution is. It's not a snap of a finger and one animal becomes another.It's a constant change and adaptation.
Raccoons becoming domestic pets will do way more damage to the ecosystem than any cats. Cry about "muh toxo" all you want. At least a stray cat wont have a higher chance of giving you fucking rabies.
>>5074517We will domesticate rabies.
>>5074517Stray cats are actually the only domesticated rabies vector in the US
Can we domesticate fish? What about mantis shrimps?
I don't understand why the snout would change
>>5074853domestication syndrome
>>5073603our skull is the most aesthetic one
>>5074517You're retarded.
>>5074754What exactly is there to domesticate?Besides that, we already line breed fish waaaay beyond what is viable in their natural environment.
>>5074940That doesn't clarify anything
>>5073567Yep, met one in florida. The little fucker would come up to the door in the evenings and sit there until door was opened. The little fucker would look up with both arms stretched out and palms up begging for bread. >stopp down hand coon bread. >looks up like thank you>puts breand in mouth>skampers off to next door. Oh, some of those little fuckers are smart alright
>>5073547Noses are shrinking in disgust due to sheer amount of smoke and gasoline and other "fun" smells in human places. (j/k)
>>5075009And they’re super cute.
>>5074201that's literally how it worksyou can also press the B button to stop it
>>5074164Might be even sooner than that if we get some autistic scientists involved. If the russians can domesticate foxes, we can domesticate raccs.
Raccoons want to be our pets so fucking bad they're evolving to look cuter to us. An entire species of pickmes.
So voles are domesticated mice? Nah. I call bullshit
>>5074991What needs clarifying?
>>5075212butter
>>5074986we don't project here, sir.
>>5074517Every mammal in the wild can get rabies
>>5075087Probably the ugly ones not getting any scraps and therefore having no offspring
I'm cool with this shit as long as I can train him to sit on my shoulder and vibe
>>5073765This Soon racoons will go the way of the domestic dog, being permanent wolf puppies
>>5074517/an/ Redditors be like >NOOOOO! CATS ARE LE BAD because...they just are ok! >What's THAT? We can heccin domesticate raccoonerinos!!??? The unpredictable, overpopulating pests that have copious amounts of diseases and cause far more damage to ecosystems, property and livestock than any cats? OH MY SCIENCE SIGN ME UP FAUCI. typical hypocritical ingrates.
>>5075670who are you quoting?
>>5075670Cats cause more damage thoughbeit. Canids are ecologically mid. They usually replace A species instead of destroying many unless the local humans are pajeet levels of dumb.
>>5075670High chance it's just dogredditors deluding or lying to themselves that even even worse pests is somehow any better than cats. What console war faggotry does to a mf.
>>5075692raccoons went invasive in japan and all they did was replace tanuki and damage pagan temples. they are ecologically identical to a pre-existing animal and only bother humans. its not like they consistently cause bird extinctions. eg raccoons = godly animalsalso, keep your cat inside.
>>5075697How the fuck raccons end up in japan?
>>5075697>Uhh it's like totally ok for this non native pest to wipe out a native counterpart because I like it OK!Kill yourself.
>>5075739The japaneese imported them en mass as pets because of an anime, and when the anime ended with the raccoon being released theg did the same. Crazy story.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rascal_the_Raccoon
>>5075790>no english dubHow the fuck am i supposed to watch anime, play videogames, and pet my cat WHILE reading subs? i hate coons now
>>5075868Dub it with AI https://github.com/santinic/audiblez
>>5075917Looks awesome! How well are the voices?I don't like the idea of Japanese people talking in American accents
>>5075918It does a pretty good job actually, haven't tried many of the voices yet. Obviously geared towards reading a book but apparently you can tweak them. Pretty easy to set up as well (ask chatgpt)
>>5075670Raccoons are not an invasive animal (in north america) like cats are thoughbeit
>>5073308Same. This is a pretty good domestication option. I’m hoping for this, more domesticated bird species, domesticated opossums, and domesticated (not tamed) elephants.
>>5074176On a drive a few years back, I noticed a racc waiting with me at a long red intersection who then proceeded to demonstrate it had figured out the walk / don't walk pedestrian crossings. Awesome critters!
>>5076301>>5073308Soillenials I hope you die a horrible death
This is like, heckin wholesome. I can't wait for my coon doggo.
>>5076445edit: thanks for the kind gold, you are a gentleman and a scholar
The raccoons in my ceiling clearly are siblings, but they fight all the fucking time. Growling/yowling and doing wwe moves up there while I type this waiting for one to get suplexed into my bedroom
>>5073303Based, coons are bros. I kept a bowl of cat food outside last summer because we had a lot of strays all of a sudden, one night I'm smoking by the door and I hear some crunches so I think the big tuxedo tomcat that hangs around is there, I come out and there;s this fat coon not a foot away from me, just eating and looking nervously at me. I got the bottom of a few bags of cat food together and went and fed him, at one point he started taking it from my hand, and I fucking swear on my mom's honor, the little dude gave me a fist bump. Also I got worried when the big tuxedo finally showed up, but that ended up being the most hilarious fight ever. The coon just grabbed a huge handful of kibbles, and all the while eating, just backed the cat into a corner with his fat ass. Just ignored the cat slapping it, backing up into the wall, stay there, eat. Twerking as a defense mechanism. Nature is beautiful.
Raccoons saw enough of the cats bullshit and decided to get in on the scam
>>5073303Haven't coons been mostly domesticated for 200 years?
>>5073615Kek
>>5073615
>>5074033Cool it with the antisemitic remarks.
>>5077047In some states they're legal to own as pets and they can be tame, but they're still wild animals. What I want to know is why do you need to register them as an exotic pet when they're endemic? As long as they're from a reputable breeder you should be good to go. Your racc escaped? Oh no, one more raccoon in the woods. The ecological horror.
>>5077231Domestication syndromebros, how do we spin this one...
>>5075790I grew up with that cartoon. Y'know it's based on a true story? My family and I moved to the US when I was in middle school. I was at the school library, found a book about a raccoon named Rascal and thought "weird; that's like the cartoon I used to watch." So took the book out and read it and it was the same Rascal. It was an autobiography written for children a la the Little House books. Read that one my first year in America.
>>5074754Fish are already domesticated, they are some of the most recent domesticated species
what is he planning?
>>5073303Where can I pre-order SMASHED raccoons?
>>5073303I've raised them and they were really smart. Smarter then any dog and acted humanish.
>>5077620Look at that domesticated snoutcel, probably never caught a crayfish in his life LMAO
>>5077648They are exactly as smart as dogs but they have hands so they can hone their skills betterOnly having a mouth gimps the nurture half of intelligence
>>5077684I taught one how to wave and say hi in one tranning session. you don't get that with dogs.
>>5073603what the hell happened with row 4
>>5074991My educated guesses>Cuter raccoons get more food>Human food is easier to access so genes selecting smaller snouts aren't punished
>>5077832It’s not a direct line of descent. Human evolution has some gaps and loops in it with cousin lineages being present, ancestral forms being absent, and ancestral humans fucking the cousin lineages and producing confusing hybrids.
