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They're pretty great pets. We had one for a while when I was a kid. Its mom got run over and we nursed it and raised it for a few months. Instinctively used the
by caymanjim 11mo ago
They're pretty great pets. We had one for a while when I was a kid. Its mom got run over and we nursed it and raised it for a few months. Instinctively used the same litter box as the cats. Hung out on the couch sitting on my shoulder watching TV. Friendly and playful. Would follow people around and play with toys.
The biggest challenge is that they basically have hands. He would climb up the kitchen cabinets, grab a box of cereal, open it up and sit there eating out of it like a toddler.
We only had him for a few months before reintroducing him to the woods behind the house. I've wanted a pet raccoon again ever since.
- mrsvanwinkle 11mo agobest HN story ive read in a while. i want a raccoon that eating tinyfist-fuls of cereal steaight from the box it opened, watching TV
- 4ggr0 11mo agosounds very similar to a stoner-roommate to be honest. a bit chaotic, but peaceful. hungry, and bored.
- bitwize 11mo ago"What do you think we have these wonderfully articulate fingers for? To scratch our asses?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqTt_jDDCio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqTt_jDDCio
- riffraff 11mo agoThere's a Japanese anime from the '70s called something like "rascal the racoon", based on an American book, which tells the story of a kid with a pet raccoon. I've wanted a pet raccoon since I saw this on TV in the '80s, and raccoons aren't even a thing in Europe :(
- callmemclovin 11mo agoWell at least in Germany they are a thing - a quick google search says there's a population of >1 million raccoons in Germany.
- tomaytotomato 11mo agoIndeed, Germany has a Raccoon problem https://youtu.be/eq3brUMm3gA https://youtu.be/eq3brUMm3gA
- fnands 11mo agoCan confirm. I was running through a forest in Berlin and saw a raccoon in a tree. Was a little confused, but apparently quite a few around here.
- shawn_w 11mo agoRascal: A Memoir of a Better Era. I had that book as a kid. There was a live action Disney film of it; didn't know about the anime version. Neat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rascal_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rascal_(book)
- IAmBroom 11mo agoA generation of us grew up deeply coveting a pet coon, and have never given up on that dream, really... The shocker for me was the bit about Rascal learning not to wash his sugarcubes before eating (or actually, to rinse once, because he was OCD about washing his food). Not that itself, although fascinating and charming; the idea that sugar was rationed to the author's family was mindblowing to juvenile me.
- QuercusMax 11mo agoI haven't read the book but it seems that this was wartime rationing based on what I read about it on the wiki article?
- gyomu 11mo agoAnd the anime was so popular it led to raccoons being imported en masse to Japan and becoming an invasive species when their owners released them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rascal_the_Raccoon#Impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rascal_the_Raccoon#Impact
- NalNezumi 11mo agoI learned about this 2 years ago when a racoon showed up in Tokyo close to where I lived. [1] wild to think they spread even all the way to Japan because of anime. and probably south Korea now. They banned raccoons in Japan but it seems to not have caught up in SK and there are a lot of racoon pet videos from SK on YouTube) [1] https://youtu.be/P2yDY5HlUBw?si=YP_Bkd_oQZ86YOHt https://youtu.be/P2yDY5HlUBw?si=YP_Bkd_oQZ86YOHt
- hyeonwho4 11mo agoThere use to be "Raccoon cafes" in Seoul. You go buy a drink and pet the raccoons. IIRC animal cafes were banned around 2019 or so.
- mamonoleechi 11mo agoRacoons are invading the north east of France: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2ijwZROb6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2ijwZROb6g ; they are exotic invasive species: a female get 10 babies per year, and there is no predator
- riffraff 11mo agoAren't those the Asian/Japanese racoons (tanuki) rather than the American ones? I recall watching a video about that many years ago when they had started appearing in eastern Europe. Edit: looking at the video they do look like American ones tho
- nickserv 11mo agoYes, those are clearly American raccoons, not the Asian "raccoon dogs". In the video it's mentioned they were unwillingly introduced by the US military, kept as pets by servicemen and escaped.
- EdwardDiego 11mo agoMy wife and I wish our country didn't have such restrictive biosecurity laws, because AWWW THEIR CUTE LITTLE HANDS.... (I mean, there's good reasons my country does have those laws, and I don't _really_ want to have a wild animal as a pet, but I kinda do.)
- trhway 11mo agoon the other side - if not for these laws, somebody would have produced a pet racoon breed in several generations, smth like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox#/media/File:Adisey_fox.JPG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox#/media... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox)
- Nevermark 11mo agoI want to breed octopus to live longer. Then identify the "morph", the gene cluster, that did the trick in the initial species, to speed up the uplift for the rest of them. But given how intelligent they are, and how much they learn in their short lifetimes, completely self-directed and self-learning highly curious autodidact geniuses from the moment they escape their tiny egg, a race of long lived octopuses without learning brakes might be an existential threat for us. Or they might create a magical ocean civilization. There are octopus species everywhere. Deepest ocean floor, under the polar cap, even a "land" species that lives on the beach. Everywhere from sea level down.
- nickserv 11mo agoDeath follows mating for the males and the eggs hatching for the females. Not an uncommon behavior, all sorts of plants (ie agave) and animals (ie salmon) have a similar strategy. Meaning the strategy works very well, and would likely be controlled by very different genes, depending on the species. Changing this "death gene" via a breeding program is likely to fail, but could perhaps be accomplished via gene editing like CRISPR. Another approach would be delaying sexual maturity. Doubling the lifespan to something like 4-5 years in the common octopus would have very interesting results. However, doubling the lifespan would effectively halve the number of offspring, meaning these mutants would be less competitive, compared to their wild relatives. This could be seen as the needed safeguard to prevent a race of highly intelligent mollusks from taking our planetary domination crown. So all in all, delaying sexual maturity seems to be the better way to go for your project. Do keep us updated on the advancement.
- Ccecil 11mo agoA former girlfriend of mine had a picture of her mother holding a Raccoon. I asked her mother about it and she said that they lived out in the woods in Minnesota and they found it on the porch when it was a baby. The mother had died or something so they kinda raised it. It was free roaming in/out of the house but they could hold it and it would also get into their food. She mentioned one time it ate a bunch of mixed nuts...but didn't like one type so it left all those in the bowl. Another time it ate an entire pie...but left her one piece ("so she wouldn't get angry"). She did say it was never really a "pet"...more like a wild animal that sometimes acted like one. This would have been in the late 70s early 80s by my guess on her age in the pictures.
- BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 11mo agoThey have a lot in common with housecats, except that they are more clever. Decades ago we heard a crunch crunch sound from the rear mudroom. We looked and saw a raccoon reaching in and eating dry cat out of a box with the cat looking on enviously. Camping I heard a crunching sound, looked out from the tent to see a racoon helping itself to granola in the back of the car. Lock your doors.
- gwd 11mo agoI remember reading somewhere once that baby raccoons are actually quite cuddly and tame; but that when they go adolescence, they have a hormone shift that makes them aggressive enough to be unsuitable as a pet. In the story a woman who had raised a baby raccoon was attacked by it after it grew to a certain age.
- zukzuk 11mo agoJudging by the murderous sounds you hear all night here in the summer, I would not want to be cornered in a dark alley by a gang of adolescent raccoons.
- amypetrik8 11mo ago>Judging by the murderous sounds you hear all night here in the summer, I would not want to be cornered in a dark alley by a gang of adolescent raccoons. Well if you ask me adolescent raccoons are a big problem in many of our cities, I'd be worried about such a case myself.
- mr_toad 11mo agoOne of the hallmarks of domestication is retaining pre-adolescent behaviour in adulthood, for example dogs barking.
- ekropotin 11mo agoWell, that sounds a lot like humans offsprings
- dwd 11mo agoWombats are the same. Cute and cuddly when little and one day just snap.
- tdeck 11mo agoI've heard the same thing from my mother, whose uncle had a baby raccoon as a pet. Once he got older he became mean and would yank on her hair for no reason.
- 11mo ago
- barbazoo 11mo agoWhat about the smell? I’ve experienced ferrets is why I’m asking.
- caymanjim 11mo agoI can't remember. We had ferrets too, and they smelled. I don't recall the raccoon having a strong smell. Maybe they smell when they're older.