Nov 18, 2025 08:10 PM
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-...he-process
INTRO: Our cities are chaotic, noisy, and dangerous. To many of us, they feel like home. But to most wild animals, they’re a hellscape. Some animals have found ways not only to survive, but thrive in the concrete jungle.
A fascinating new study out of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock suggests that North American raccoons (Procyon lotor) are undergoing a physical transformation directly linked to their life in the city. Specifically, their faces are changing.
Urban raccoons are developing significantly shorter snouts than their rural cousins. This suggests that raccoons are entering the early stages of “domestication syndrome.” This is the same biological process that turned wolves into pugs and wild boars into farm pigs.
You’d assume domestication involves some kind of selective breeding. This isn’t the case here. We’re not putting raccoons in pens, but by building cities and filling them with calorie-dense refuse, we have created a massive, unintentional evolutionary experiment. The raccoons are domesticating themselves.
In fact, most biologists today believe that the first step of domestication starts with natural selection. Voluntary or not, humans create a niche. In this case, the abundance of food scraps you can find around trash in cities, and the lack of large predators. This creates an incentive for animals to exploit this niche. But they need to tick one additional box: they need to be chill... (MORE - details)
INTRO: Our cities are chaotic, noisy, and dangerous. To many of us, they feel like home. But to most wild animals, they’re a hellscape. Some animals have found ways not only to survive, but thrive in the concrete jungle.
A fascinating new study out of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock suggests that North American raccoons (Procyon lotor) are undergoing a physical transformation directly linked to their life in the city. Specifically, their faces are changing.
Urban raccoons are developing significantly shorter snouts than their rural cousins. This suggests that raccoons are entering the early stages of “domestication syndrome.” This is the same biological process that turned wolves into pugs and wild boars into farm pigs.
You’d assume domestication involves some kind of selective breeding. This isn’t the case here. We’re not putting raccoons in pens, but by building cities and filling them with calorie-dense refuse, we have created a massive, unintentional evolutionary experiment. The raccoons are domesticating themselves.
In fact, most biologists today believe that the first step of domestication starts with natural selection. Voluntary or not, humans create a niche. In this case, the abundance of food scraps you can find around trash in cities, and the lack of large predators. This creates an incentive for animals to exploit this niche. But they need to tick one additional box: they need to be chill... (MORE - details)