Speaker 1: Oh hey, Hi, it's your neighbor who just needs a
Speaker 1: couple tips on how to start weightlifting real quick. Ali Ward,
Speaker 1: I'm back with an episode of Ologies that. Honestly, I
Speaker 1: know what's up. You squealed when you saw it.
Speaker 2: I get it. You said, Wow, the.
Speaker 1: Holiday times aren't going to be magical. Someone did get
Speaker 1: me a present. There is joy to the world. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about eating garbage raccoons. Okay, wow, So these critters
Speaker 1: they have these tiny alive doll hands and ample but donks,
Speaker 1: and they wear carnival cat burglar disguises. They got striped
Speaker 1: goth tales.
Speaker 2: What are they?
Speaker 1: Are they taking over the world? Why do we love
Speaker 1: them so much? And what can we learn from them?
Speaker 2: A lot?
Speaker 1: Okay, and we're going to do it via the world's
Speaker 1: most sought after raccoon expert who studied zoology and genetics
Speaker 1: for undergrad and psychology for her masters at the University
Speaker 1: of alberta kind of a rare combination. She now is
Speaker 1: a York University psychology professor and an animal behaviorist. She
Speaker 1: studied all manner of animals, from the reproductive drochronology of
Speaker 1: marmots naturally to rhino an elephant conservation, red wolf sperm,
Speaker 1: and anxiety in orphaned primates. But the world relies on
Speaker 1: her frankly, as an animal behaviorist and a Toronto resident
Speaker 1: to field questions about that thing in your backyard treating
Speaker 1: your coy pond like a sizzler. And she served as
Speaker 1: the on call behaviorist at the Toronto Zoo for literal decades.
Speaker 1: And if there is a well made documentary about raccoons,
Speaker 1: they have probably interviewed her first.
Speaker 2: Just google Raccoon Nation.
Speaker 1: If you don't believe me, you're welcome. Also, thank you
Speaker 1: to patrons for supporting the show for as little as
Speaker 1: a dollar a month. You send in questions there. It's
Speaker 1: at patreon dot com slash ologies. Thanks to everyone who
Speaker 1: passes episodes onto friends and family, and who subscribes and
Speaker 1: follows and rates and reviews. Those really keep it up
Speaker 1: in the charts so other people find it. I read
Speaker 1: your reviews, every single one of them, every week, and
Speaker 1: they are the singular pillar of my self esteem, like
Speaker 1: this one from Emma Garsh, who wrote The Genius Associated
Speaker 1: at Staples, printed so many things for me and is
Speaker 1: studying to be a marine biologist at CEEU Boulder. Of course,
Speaker 1: she listens to ologies too. If you're reading this, my
Speaker 1: dear Staples associate friend, Hi, maybe I'll hear you on
Speaker 1: ologies one day. Sign Emma, Emma and future choral expert.
Speaker 2: Oh hey, I.
Speaker 1: Love an office supply store truly and both of you. Okay,
Speaker 1: onto the ologist to the hour. Here we go. She's
Speaker 1: been at the top of my list for years. But
Speaker 1: I had this problem of like, what ology is.
Speaker 2: This going to be.
Speaker 1: There's got to be one. There has to be one.
Speaker 1: People love raccoons. Someone had the Twitter handle raccoonologist, but
Speaker 1: then they went off.
Speaker 2: To go study some birds.
Speaker 1: What about pro scionologist from the genus of the common
Speaker 1: raccoon procyon loader, which means before dog, creature that washes stuff.
Speaker 1: By the way, raccoon comes from the indigenous po Watten
Speaker 1: language and it means the animal that scratches with his hands.
Speaker 1: But the name for this it's kind of still being debated.
Speaker 1: But we're going to err on the side of the
Speaker 1: dryer science and also follow the lead of a Reddit
Speaker 1: post I read about what to call a raccoon studyer,
Speaker 1: in this case, a very knowledgeable, super dry strawberry blonde
Speaker 1: world adventure and a thinker about thinking. Who indulged me
Speaker 1: in this delightful chat about compost bins, chaos, whether their
Speaker 1: bottoms are ample enough, tree sleeping brainworms, the symphonic stylings
Speaker 1: of these loping muses, cartoon raccoons, bisexual icons, whether you
Speaker 1: should invite one to move into your condo, and really
Speaker 1: some of the best career in life advice you could
Speaker 1: ever get from these backyard babies. Bungee cord yourself in
Speaker 1: tightly for a feast of facts with psychologist, animal behavior scientist,
Speaker 1: professor and pro scionologist, doctor Suzanne McDonald.
Speaker 3: I'm doctor Suzanne McDonald. She her.
Speaker 1: I've been so excited. I've been wanting to do this
Speaker 1: episode for years. People have been begging for an episode
Speaker 1: about raccoons. I know, would it be do you think
Speaker 1: in terms of ologies, would it be raccoonology or would
Speaker 1: it be No?
Speaker 3: No, okay, no, that's ridiculous. No, it's just a We
Speaker 3: study animal behavior and raccoons are just a species that
Speaker 3: we study.
Speaker 1: Well tomorrow an expression from your grandmother, whoomp, there it
Speaker 1: is so the reigning North American expert on raccoons says,
Speaker 1: it's not raccoonology but ooh holiday bonus. Next week, I'm
Speaker 1: going to be dishing up a not Raccoonology Part two
Speaker 1: in which we talk to more experts who study these
Speaker 1: little ringtailed gremlins. And I asked them, I was like,
Speaker 1: what should I call this episode?
Speaker 4: So a few ideas for an ologies episode on raccoons
Speaker 4: could be raccoonology or maybe pro scionidology, or even banditology,
Speaker 4: pro seonology, raccoonology, raccoonology, procionidology.
Speaker 2: Procionology makes the most sense. Crafty buggerology would be more
Speaker 2: more fitting.
Speaker 1: So whether you're on team raccoonology or a pro scionology,
Speaker 1: perhaps crafty buggerology. One thing upon which society at large
Speaker 1: can all agree is that a group of raccoons is
Speaker 1: called a nursery. Oh wait, no, shoot, it's also called
Speaker 1: a gaze. Okay, well either either. So how did Icon
Speaker 1: and Wildlife bileage with doctor McDonald get so lucky to
Speaker 1: have a job gazing at gazes? How did you come
Speaker 1: to study raccoons? How did you end up in this field?
Speaker 3: Well, I've been study animal behavior for thirty years, so
Speaker 3: I work with many, many other species most of the time.
Speaker 3: So I work with the rangutans and polar bears and
Speaker 3: monkeys and elephants and hyaenus and kenya and I work
Speaker 3: with many, many species, and the only one anyone ever
Speaker 3: wants to talk about is raccoons. But that's fine. I
Speaker 3: started working with them about ten years ago when I
Speaker 3: was actually interviewed for a TV show and they said,
Speaker 3: we can't find anyone who studies raccoons. Could you, because
Speaker 3: I study animal behavior, could you, you know, tell us
Speaker 3: about raccoons? And I said, sure, but nobody really knows
Speaker 3: very much. And that's how I started doing research with them.
Speaker 1: Well why do you think there is such a fascination
Speaker 1: with their behavior?
Speaker 3: Well, I think there wasn't always a fascination with their behavior.
Speaker 3: So I do think that now that it's they're more
Speaker 3: common in cities and people are seeing them in their backyard,
Speaker 3: especially during the pandemic, I think that people just really
Speaker 3: really find them fascinating because they I think they kind
Speaker 3: of I've had people say they're like my spirit animal.
Speaker 3: It's like, okay, well I really hate that phrase. That
Speaker 3: seems like a terrible phrase. But I think the idea
Speaker 3: is that people really identify with them because they're kind
Speaker 3: of mischievous and cute. And they hang around and they
Speaker 3: eat a lot, and you know, honestly, if they could,
Speaker 3: they'd live in your house on the couch with the remote.
Speaker 3: And they kind of have a lot of human like behaviors,
Speaker 3: and so I think those characteristics make them appealing. And
Speaker 3: they're darn cute. I mean, how could you not love them?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they are very adorable.
Speaker 1: Was there something about animal behavior that always fascinated you
Speaker 1: growing up or how do you steer your career to
Speaker 1: the science.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm very interested in conservation and the environment and
Speaker 3: have been since I was a child. So I started
Speaker 3: a club when I was nine on conservation and animal behavior.
Speaker 3: So I don't actually remember any time when I wasn't
Speaker 3: interested in that. I think a lot of kids are
Speaker 3: interested in animals and animal behavior, and I talk to
Speaker 3: a lot of kids, and they're all super well informed
Speaker 3: and wonderful, and then they tend to lose it when
Speaker 3: they get a little bit older and get interested in
Speaker 3: something else. But I guess I maintained that I probably
Speaker 3: never grew up, I guess, and I'm just interested in
Speaker 3: animal behavior. But if we don't learn how to coexist
Speaker 3: with other species, we're just one puny little species. On
Speaker 3: the face of the earth. After all, in probably two
Speaker 3: million others, then we'll all be in big trouble. So
Speaker 3: it seems to be more important now than ever.
Speaker 1: Do you ever see a lot of similarities in the
Speaker 1: groups of animals that you work with or why do
Speaker 1: you study the ones that you study particularly?
Speaker 3: Ah, Well, there's always a project in minds, so there's
Speaker 3: a reason to do that. I'm interested in how animals think,
Speaker 3: and so I work with primates because other primates, like us,
Speaker 3: our cousins, think similarly to us, but also have enough
Speaker 3: interesting differences that we can learn quite a bit about
Speaker 3: how brains work, which is my primary interest as a psychologist.
Speaker 3: As a biologist, I'm very interested in how we mitigate
Speaker 3: human wildlife conflict and how we can learn to live
Speaker 3: with other species without exterminating the other species, which seems
Speaker 3: to be our go to as a human. I'm part
Speaker 3: biologist and part psychologists. So some of my projects are
Speaker 3: about how animals think, and some of my projects are
Speaker 3: about how do we all get along?
Speaker 1: And I suppose when it comes to the animal and
Speaker 1: human interaction, there's no place like a big city crawling
Speaker 1: with raccoons to really study that.
Speaker 3: I imagine, right, it's absolutely amazing. Yeah, you know, like
Speaker 3: I get on a plane and fly thirty hours to
Speaker 3: my field site in Kenya, or I can just go
Speaker 3: in the backyard. So it was quite a revelation to me, like, oh,
Speaker 3: well this is good. So yeah, I have raccoons in
Speaker 3: the backyard and I can test out all my stuff
Speaker 3: with them on my deck and they're very willing participants.
Speaker 3: I can tell you that two of them are going
Speaker 3: to show up in about twenty minutes and knocking at
Speaker 3: the door because that's what they do every night. So yeah,
Speaker 3: it's pretty great. There are so many raccoons in the
Speaker 3: Greater Toronto area and never any problem getting participants for
Speaker 3: my studies.
Speaker 1: That's right, I've Can you tell me a little bit
Speaker 1: about the studies that you're doing now? When you say
Speaker 1: that you've got some equipment set up or some studies
Speaker 1: set up in your backyard, can you walk me through
Speaker 1: what that looks like.
Speaker 3: Sure, it depends again on the project. So I have
Speaker 3: done some things looking at how raccoon's problem solved. So
Speaker 3: can they open up garbage cans? For example? Like how
Speaker 3: do they do it? If they're urban animals? Are they
Speaker 3: different than ones that live in the country, Yes they are.
Speaker 3: So my big plan is looking at our the urban
Speaker 3: raccoons differentiating from the rural raccoons. So are they becoming
Speaker 3: a new subspecies or species based on their interactions with us.
Speaker 3: This is a question that really interests me about how
Speaker 3: humans actually cause evolution, that we are the ones that
Speaker 3: are driving the changes on the planet, and so looking
Speaker 3: at how raccoon behavior it changes and how their little
Speaker 3: brains change is really interesting to me. So I can
Speaker 3: ask them to solve problems and see how they do that.
Speaker 3: I've also done some really practical stuff, testing garbage bins
Speaker 3: you call them trash bins, I think in the US
Speaker 3: for the city of Toronto, so testing out new organic
Speaker 3: waste bins which we call green bins they are actually green,
Speaker 3: and seeing whether they're raccoon resistant. Right now, I'm looking
Speaker 3: at a possums in my backyard and raccoons, And this
Speaker 3: is all just trying to get an idea of what's
Speaker 3: going on because nobody really studies these urban wildlife species.
Speaker 3: They're very difficult to study. I mean, you can't bring
Speaker 3: them into a lab, which is psychologists love to bring
Speaker 3: animals into a lab.
Speaker 1: So We're going to cover more on what happens when
Speaker 1: proscinologists try to bring raccoons into a lab next week
Speaker 1: in part two.
Speaker 2: But whoa, it's good.
Speaker 1: It's just it's premium mischief. So rub your tiny hands
Speaker 1: together for next Tuesday. But if you're still thinking about
Speaker 1: city raccoons versus their rural cousins, what are the differences?
Speaker 1: Does one tend to wear camouflage windbreakers? Is another snobbier
Speaker 1: about which pour over coffee they lap up off a bench. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out city raccoons have gotten craftier than their
Speaker 1: country counterparts, because the raccoons that can figure out how
Speaker 1: to wrestle a locked green bin are rewarded with all
Speaker 1: kinds of compostable treasure from like eggplant peels and shrimpshells
Speaker 1: and delicious bones apple cores. They're like, I came to
Speaker 1: the big city to make it, and by make it,
Speaker 1: I mean poop and your hammock. And Suzanne's research revealed
Speaker 1: that rural raccoons there's kind of shrug compost bins, but
Speaker 1: city raccoons get to work immediately, no matter how expertly
Speaker 1: engineered they are. And apparently eighty percent of metro raccoons
Speaker 1: could crack a trash can like a pro while none
Speaker 1: of the rural once could. They were like so the
Speaker 1: results the rise and proliferation of smart city sun subitious
Speaker 1: trash pandas. Think again, you're giving pandas too much credit.
Speaker 1: But how many urban raccoons are even out there? So
Speaker 1: Suzanne has counted up to fifty in one backyard, which
Speaker 1: is not a gaze. That's like a legit rager. If
Speaker 1: you don't want them there, well you might have to
Speaker 1: just shut down their trendiest restaurants, such as your freshwater
Speaker 1: fountains or.
Speaker 2: Your bird feeders.
Speaker 1: And I read that advice and I was like, they
Speaker 1: just eat bird seed. Gross, And then I realized that
Speaker 1: I was literally in the middle of a bullet granola. Anyway,
Speaker 1: wildlife is studied in the wild, which might literally mean
Speaker 1: a backyard, and in Suzanne's case, involves many many nights
Speaker 1: of spying on these little living hobgoblins or not.
Speaker 3: And I've also measured that sounds a bit more than
Speaker 3: dead raccoons to see if how their size changes. It's
Speaker 3: a good way to measure animals as if they're dead.
Speaker 3: So I didn't kill them. They were killed by traffic.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it sounds like I'm a monster. You know,
Speaker 3: they were already killed, and they were sadly had already
Speaker 3: passed away. So then a couple of years measuring dead raccoons.
Speaker 3: That's fun to explain to your friends, that's right.
Speaker 1: How did you feel about the very well publicized raccoon
Speaker 1: funeral in Toronto a few years back?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, what was the name of the raccoon?
Speaker 2: I gotta look it up.
Speaker 3: It was a seed like Curtis or it was hilarious
Speaker 3: whatever it was. Several years ago. I was actually in Africa.
Speaker 3: I was in South Africa at the time, working with elephants,
Speaker 3: and somebody emailed me the times are all odd, right
Speaker 3: because the time zone changes, and I got to see
Speaker 3: with this picture of a memorial for a raccoon, and
Speaker 3: I was like, what the hell is happening when I'm gone, Like,
Speaker 3: what is going on? Has the city lost its mine?
Speaker 3: I think it was I can't remember what the name was,
Speaker 3: but anyway, yeah, I wasn't in the country, and so
Speaker 3: I thought, when you're removed from the country and you're
Speaker 3: removed from Toronto, it just seems pretty crazy. So I
Speaker 3: just laughed and thought it was pretty crazy, but they
Speaker 3: were trying to draw attention to the fact that the
Speaker 3: poor little raccoon was not removed by the city, that
Speaker 3: was allowed to just sort of be there in the gutter.
Speaker 3: It was sad.
Speaker 1: Side note, his name was Conrad. Even the city's official
Speaker 1: social channels joined the bereavement, tweeting that Toronto residents are
Speaker 1: being asked to keep their green bins open tonight in
Speaker 1: honor of Conrad. Hashtag dead raccoon too. Yeah, I hope
Speaker 1: my funeral is as well attended.
Speaker 2: Is that dead raccoon? Because what a what a life?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it also tells you more about the people
Speaker 3: in Toronto than write anything else.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Canadians the most polite.
Speaker 2: Type of human.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, it's just it made me laugh. And of
Speaker 3: course I had a bunch of students with me from
Speaker 3: the UK and they're all like, what is what is
Speaker 3: wrong with your country? Like what is going on there?
Speaker 3: It was pretty funny. Yeah, I'm sorry for the raccoon,
Speaker 3: and we have many, many, many thousands of raccoons, so
Speaker 3: they're not endangered. It's okay.
Speaker 1: How long is a typical urban raccoons lifespan?
Speaker 3: Oh not very long, So raccoons in captivity. There are
Speaker 3: some raccoons in captivity. We have raccoons at the Toronto
Speaker 3: Zoo who live a nice long life, probably sixteen to
Speaker 3: twenty years. But wild raccoons are lucky if they make it.
Speaker 1: Three years, three years versus twenty. What is happening on
Speaker 1: those mean streets.
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, there's disease and there's traffic. Those are there
Speaker 3: two There are two Nemesis Nemeses nemesis, so you know,
Speaker 3: they are a protected wildlife species, so they have no
Speaker 3: and they have no predators in the city other than traffic.
Speaker 3: It's they're a big predator and disease because they are
Speaker 3: so the densities are so high. If disease gets into
Speaker 3: the population, it spreads through pretty quickly, so it happens
Speaker 3: every few years we get a big outbreak of canine distemper,
Speaker 3: which comes from dogs, and we lose a lot of
Speaker 3: raccoons that way. It's pretty sad. Actually, raccoons are of
Speaker 3: interest to the government because they are a vector for rabies,
Speaker 3: so they are monitored quite closely. We have no rabies
Speaker 3: in the Greater Toronto area population, but there have been
Speaker 3: a few nearby and those are followed very closely. So
Speaker 3: any species that is a rabies vector is also monitored,
Speaker 3: so you don't want to get too close to any
Speaker 3: any of those species, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, are there any tips that bile just want the
Speaker 1: general public to know in terms of seeing a raccoon
Speaker 1: then the daytime, or seeing a raccoon who's behaving differently.
Speaker 3: Yes, everybody says. I get these emails from just random
Speaker 3: humans saying I saw a raccoon in the afternoon. It
Speaker 3: was rabbit, right, I'm like, no, it was just out
Speaker 3: in the afternoon. They're not vampires like they can come
Speaker 3: out in the sunlight. They don't explode, really, they're just out.
Speaker 3: They are just hanging. Usually it's females who are super
Speaker 3: hungry and because they're nursing kids, or it's young ones
Speaker 3: like the ones that are going to show up in
Speaker 3: a couple of minutes, young ones who are if they
Speaker 3: come out a little earlier, they get first crack at
Speaker 3: whatever food's there, so they learned to come out a
Speaker 3: little earlier. They are not rabbit just because they're out
Speaker 3: in the daytime. Really, that's just silly.
Speaker 2: Flim flam busted.
Speaker 1: But what if they are sick so Suzanne described some
Speaker 1: symptoms you can look out for, or rather I guess
Speaker 1: listen for.
Speaker 3: You know, if they are behaving strangely, vocalizing, they make
Speaker 3: these god awful noises when they're sick, and they seriously that.
Speaker 3: When they have canine distemper, they howl and scream because
Speaker 3: they're in extreme pain and there's nothing that can be
Speaker 3: done for them. So you have to call Toronto Animal
Speaker 3: Services or animal services and they will come and uthanize them.
Speaker 3: So there's no cure for that, unfortunately. So if you
Speaker 3: see a raccoon acting strangely, then you know, stay away
Speaker 3: from it, don't go towards it. Please do not take
Speaker 3: a selfie. Please do not do any of that. You
Speaker 3: can take a video from a distance and send it
Speaker 3: to your animal services. In the US, there is rabies
Speaker 3: in the raccoon population in parts of the US, not
Speaker 3: all of the US, not in California, but you know,
Speaker 3: back away. I think social distance is ideal with all raccoons.
Speaker 3: Just give them, give them some space, do not corner them.
Speaker 3: If you corner a mother with kids, then she will
Speaker 3: be mad just like you would be. And just give
Speaker 3: them some space and enjoy them and let them go
Speaker 3: on their way, and that's the best advice I have
Speaker 3: just but if they are acting strangely and they do
Speaker 3: look to be in pain, then call animal services.
Speaker 1: And obviously those vocalizations when they're in pain are heartbreaking
Speaker 1: and probably tough to hear. But do they have vocalizations
Speaker 1: when they're not in pain, when they're happy or communicating?
Speaker 3: Dozens? Yes, So they talk. They're very chatty raccoons. Oh well,
Speaker 3: they have many noises, so the babies have noises to
Speaker 3: get their mothers to pay attention. They per People call
Speaker 3: them different. They don't purr like cats, but it's a
Speaker 3: similar kind of sound. They trail, lature, they do all
Speaker 3: sorts of things when they're mating. They I always get
Speaker 3: emails about this too. In January February here it's cold,
Speaker 3: but we often have a day or two that has
Speaker 3: like it's called a January saw. So it's a little
Speaker 3: warmer than normal. And when I say above zero celsius,
Speaker 3: so I don't know whatever that is, thirty two, I
Speaker 3: don't know fahrenheit thirty two fahrenheit. So when it gets
Speaker 3: a little warmer in January, they will come out and
Speaker 3: they'll mate, And so people email me all the time
Speaker 3: in January, and they say the raccoons are dying. Oh,
Speaker 3: they're actually mating. Yeah, they're on your fence and they're
Speaker 3: mating and they make all sorts of terrible noises, screaming
Speaker 3: and yelling, and that's what they're doing. And then they
Speaker 3: go back to being. They don't hibernate, but they're less
Speaker 3: active in the winter, and then they go back to that,
Speaker 3: and then you know, about sixty three days later, the
Speaker 3: females will have their little babies. But yeah, every year
Speaker 3: in January, Oh my god, the raccoons are dying. No, No,
Speaker 3: that's just raccoon love. That's just how they sound.
Speaker 1: Is that part of what you have to study too?
Speaker 1: As a behaviorist? Do you study what those different noises mean?
Speaker 3: I don't. Not very many people have studied it. I
Speaker 3: mean maybe one of my students can study it. But
Speaker 3: it is very, very difficult to study raccoons because you
Speaker 3: can't really follow them. We did a study where we
Speaker 3: put GPS tracking callers on raccoons, and even that as well.
Speaker 3: Once you get them on, it's very difficult to get
Speaker 3: them off because they become trapshy. They're smart little buggers.
Speaker 2: Crafty, bugger ology would be more more fitting.
Speaker 3: And it's very difficult to follow them, even with callers
Speaker 3: on because a caller will tell you that they're in
Speaker 3: a backyard. They don't tell you where they are, so
Speaker 3: they can be on the roof, in the attic, under
Speaker 3: the deck, in the house, anywhere, in a tree, in
Speaker 3: a bush. You never know.
Speaker 1: It's terrible, so yes, tricky to track, but it could
Speaker 1: be an interesting study for an enterprising pro scionologists or
Speaker 1: a crafty bugger ologist. There's a lot you can hear.
Speaker 1: If you listen to a raccoon.
Speaker 3: They chat they're very, very chatty all the time with
Speaker 3: the different sounds, and you start to get to know
Speaker 3: what they mean. And the baby sounds are the best.
Speaker 3: They're just sweet and you know, trying to get their
Speaker 3: mom to give them some food. So I like those ones.
Speaker 3: The other ones always sound like they're being ripped to shreds,
Speaker 3: like they're just really like, if you hear raccoons fighting,
Speaker 3: you go, well, obviously there's gonna be dead raccoons in
Speaker 3: the morning. There never are they really just wow, they're
Speaker 3: not shy.
Speaker 2: So you don't have a raccoon ring tone.
Speaker 3: Then I do not know because I'm not insane, so
Speaker 3: that's why.
Speaker 1: Where are they chillen during the day? Like, I know
Speaker 1: I have raccoons in the yard. I've found a raccoon
Speaker 1: latrine in my yard. I know, I know, I and
Speaker 1: I understand that there are possibly roundworms and the raccoon
Speaker 1: latreneuld be either disposed of or discouraged, yes, which I
Speaker 1: guess you could do during the daytime.
Speaker 2: But in the daytime, are they asleep in a tree
Speaker 2: over my head? Yes?
Speaker 3: They are so raccoons in what we found from the
Speaker 3: GPS study is that raccoons have about I'm going to
Speaker 3: say ten these are urban raccoons anyway, have about ten
Speaker 3: DAN sites that they have, and those dand sites are
Speaker 3: up in trees or in bushes or under decks or
Speaker 3: wherever they have their spots. And it's sort of like
Speaker 3: wherever they are in the morning when the sun comes
Speaker 3: up again. They aren't vampires, but kind of like that.
Speaker 3: They find the closest one and they will sit there,
Speaker 3: and they don't use the same one all the time,
Speaker 3: which is why you know, sometimes you'll go, oh, I
Speaker 3: had raccoons up in that tree yesterday, but today they're
Speaker 3: not there. I wonder where they are, Well, they're probably
Speaker 3: in the neighbor's tree because that's another site. So they
Speaker 3: move between those sites, so they may not come back
Speaker 3: to your tree for a couple days, or they might
Speaker 3: be there for a while. It's whatever they decide to
Speaker 3: do wherever they' food. So yeah, they they're often up
Speaker 3: in the like the crook of a tree, like where
Speaker 3: the trees branch out, and they sleep in there, and
Speaker 3: they're really well camouflaged, so you I mean, I know
Speaker 3: they're up there, and I can't see them unless they
Speaker 3: lift their head and then you can see their little faces.
Speaker 3: But otherwise you can't see them at all. So they
Speaker 3: have to move or you're not going to see them.
Speaker 3: And I know mine. I think mine are in my
Speaker 3: backyard tree today, and they'll come down to look to
Speaker 3: see what snacks are out pretty soon, so not always
Speaker 3: the same spot.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is obviously a very basic question and
Speaker 1: quite ignorant, but how do they not fall out of
Speaker 1: the tree when they're asleep?
Speaker 2: They have such big round butts.
Speaker 3: They do they look their butts look bigger than they are,
Speaker 3: so when they're actually flattened down, their butts are not
Speaker 3: as big, so I can tell you, because I've measured
Speaker 3: benny dead raccoons. So when they're dead, their butts are
Speaker 3: their butts are not that big. It's because they're hunched
Speaker 3: over when you see them, and so their rears look
Speaker 3: giant like whoa. But they can actually squash kind of
Speaker 3: flatten their spines down and get That's how they get
Speaker 3: into such small spaces. So you would look at a
Speaker 3: raccoon and say, well, that is not getting into a
Speaker 3: two inch opening in my garage door. Oh, yes, it is,
Speaker 3: because they are going to flatten themselves down and slide
Speaker 3: right through. So they are a deceiving looking species. So
Speaker 3: when they're in the cork of a tree, they hang
Speaker 3: like I don't know if you've ever seen red pandas,
Speaker 3: but red pandas do the same thing. They kind of
Speaker 3: hang on a tree and so they're pretty their bulk
Speaker 3: of their body is in the tree, and then they
Speaker 3: can let their head and their feet go over, but
Speaker 3: they try to keep their heads down so nobody can
Speaker 3: see that. And they just stuck it in their tail.
Speaker 1: Oh and now I'm looking out at my trees wondering
Speaker 1: which one's got raccoons in them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, more than you think. So, I've
Speaker 3: had a lot of people tell me, oh, yeah, I know,
Speaker 3: you can come and put your cameras in my backyard,
Speaker 3: but you won't find any wreck woons. And then I
Speaker 3: showed them the video the next day and they go, oh,
Speaker 3: I had no idea because they're in all the trees.
Speaker 3: So yep, all right, just wak clalk wall to wall raccoons.
Speaker 1: Well that's how we confirmed that the latrine was a
Speaker 1: raccoon latrine. I mean I the first day that I
Speaker 1: surveyed the property and I thought, well, I've got to
Speaker 1: figure out which neighbors pooping here and have a very
Speaker 1: awkward conversation.
Speaker 2: Yes, but I was like, but there's no toilet paper.
Speaker 1: Then I did some digging and on the internet, not
Speaker 1: in the dirt, and realized that it probably raccoons, and
Speaker 1: so I put up a camera trap. Sure enough, raccoons
Speaker 1: using it as a potty. But I understand there is
Speaker 1: a little bit of a risk in certain regions of
Speaker 1: round worm parasites.
Speaker 2: So what do you do if you find a raccoon
Speaker 2: latrine on your roof in.
Speaker 3: Your yard, Well, you should put on a mask. And
Speaker 3: luckily we all have those now, so that really well
Speaker 3: I used to say that and people would be like
Speaker 3: a mask, Where do I get a mask? Well, I
Speaker 3: guaranteed not a problem. Put on a mask and some gloves.
Speaker 3: Get yourself a shovel, scoop that up, dispose of it
Speaker 3: in a bag, throw it away in a seal bag,
Speaker 3: and if you can, put some bleach on the area,
Speaker 3: just to kill whatever's left. This is just something I've
Speaker 3: learned and it's and I told one of my good
Speaker 3: friends to do this, and she's like, this sounds unlikely, Susanna,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, no, try it, And she did. If
Speaker 3: you want them not to use the spot as a latrine,
Speaker 3: put some aluminum foil in that spot. They don't like
Speaker 3: aluminum foil. It sounds graasy, but they really don't like
Speaker 3: the feel of it on their feet. And so she
Speaker 3: had one a latrine on her roof and she had
Speaker 3: to hang out the window and put the luminium foil
Speaker 3: on her roof. But they never came back.
Speaker 2: Really, so they do not want to have a disco
Speaker 2: space potty party.
Speaker 3: They do not know.
Speaker 1: Just a quick round worm aside, because I know we
Speaker 1: all want one. Brainworm parasites Akaa bayless scaris procyonus are
Speaker 1: tiny little monsters and you must destroy them. So there's
Speaker 1: this one CDC pamphlet that I read today. It earnestly
Speaker 1: recommended the kill it with fire technique. The pamphlet continued
Speaker 1: with this very breezy faq and just said, should I
Speaker 1: flame the latrine site with a pro paine torch? And
Speaker 1: then calmly answered, most chemicals don't kill roundworm eggs that
Speaker 1: are not suitable for outdoor use. Extreme heat will kill
Speaker 1: eggs instantly, break up and turnover contaminated soil several times,
Speaker 1: flaming each time. Flaming with the propaine torch is effective,
Speaker 1: but could cause a fire, burn, injury, or surface damage.
Speaker 1: And then it just says, you know, ask the fire
Speaker 1: department first, obviously, and obviously they have likes, they have dislikes,
Speaker 1: They have a certain language of their own. So when
Speaker 1: it comes to their cognition, how smart are they?
Speaker 3: Not as smart as people think they are. Ouch. Honestly,
Speaker 3: I started studying raccoons because I thought they would be
Speaker 3: like the monkeys of North America. So I study a
Speaker 3: lot of primates, and we don't have monkeys in North America,
Speaker 3: So I thought, I wonder if Raccoons fill that same niche,
Speaker 3: and their little brains have developed to be like the
Speaker 3: monkeys a North America. Because everyone's like, oh, they're geniuses. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the answer is no, they are not the monkeys of
Speaker 3: North America. They are clever and endearing and lovely sometimes,
Speaker 3: but they are not the monkeys of North America. So
Speaker 3: they do have good memory. But when it comes to
Speaker 3: I'll give you an example. So if I work with
Speaker 3: monkeys in Kenya and they're called vervet monkeys, they're little,
Speaker 3: adorable little monkeys, and little Vervet monkeys will watch you
Speaker 3: and know when you turn your back, they will steal
Speaker 3: your stuff. That's what they do. Raccoons, they may watch you,
Speaker 3: but they don't wait for you to turn your back
Speaker 3: to doing stuff because they don't understand that. They just
Speaker 3: see a thing and want the thing and get the thing.
Speaker 3: So there's no sort of plotting and scheming, just impulsivity
Speaker 3: and just going for it. And that's what raccoons do.
Speaker 3: It's a different kind of cognition really, it's just a
Speaker 3: sort of like destroy, break, grab, do whatever, fiddle with
Speaker 3: stuff until things break. That is what their go to
Speaker 3: strategy is. So they're not sitting and pondering and thinking
Speaker 3: about how doors work or any of that stuff. They're
Speaker 3: just like, if I keep on pushing at it, it's
Speaker 3: gonna open up. So that's what they do.
Speaker 2: They're a little chaos goblins.
Speaker 3: They are, absolutely so. They That's why they do so
Speaker 3: much damage because they're not sitting there thinking about the
Speaker 3: best way to get into your house. They're just like, oh,
Speaker 3: this looks loose. I think I'll just play with this
Speaker 3: for an hour, and then they rip your shingle off.
Speaker 3: So that's that's a raccoon way.
Speaker 1: So if you're wondering whether raccoons are all gathered somewhere
Speaker 1: in an underground layer plotting the destruction of order, well,
Speaker 1: according to Suzanne, their cognition is such that they don't
Speaker 1: teach each other stuff, but they belong to the Church
Speaker 1: of trial and error. So raccoons are called neophiles, meaning
Speaker 1: that they see something unfamiliar and they're down. They're just like,
Speaker 1: I'm into it. They're the friend that makes you go
Speaker 1: on the roller coaster, the one that tries the new
Speaker 1: hot wings place even though it's health code rating. As
Speaker 1: a sea they're gonna wear hair and pants and a
Speaker 1: crop top before everyone else and they'll look good, but
Speaker 1: they will also smash your belongings until they eat them.
Speaker 1: And they'll invade ecosystems and shake you down for hot
Speaker 1: dogs until you're bleeding. And Jarrett made the point that
Speaker 1: given that they're endemic to North America, it's just a
Speaker 1: damn shame that the bald eagle is our national bird
Speaker 1: here in America instead of the raccoon. I mean, what's
Speaker 1: more American than a growing divide between rural and metro lifestyles,
Speaker 1: some destructive avarice and looking cute from afar but being
Speaker 1: kind of a hell child up close. But you still
Speaker 1: want to cut a one. I get it, so do I.
Speaker 1: But bad news, Suzanne says. In Canada you can't legally
Speaker 1: have a captive raccoon, although in the US you can
Speaker 1: in certain states with a wild animal permit or a
Speaker 1: wildlife rehab license Arkansas, calm down, you can only own
Speaker 1: five at a time. And really, perhaps a question isn't
Speaker 1: can you cohabitate with a raccoon?
Speaker 2: But should you?
Speaker 1: I mean it depends do you like anarchy?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: What about folks in America who have domesticated them or
Speaker 1: purchased a domesticated one?
Speaker 2: Or raised an orphan what is a for.
Speaker 1: Lack of a better term, an expert raccoonologist opinion on that.
Speaker 3: It's a bad idea. But okay, I do know that
Speaker 3: people love their raccoons. People love baby raccoons, and how
Speaker 3: could you not. Although they're bity little things, I gotta
Speaker 3: say they're super cute. But baby raccoons within a few
Speaker 3: months turn into adult raccoons who are super bidy and
Speaker 3: super destructive and not quite as cute as they used
Speaker 3: to be. So you know, they're wild animals. They belong
Speaker 3: in the wild, not in your house, in my opinion,
Speaker 3: But if somebody already has one, then you know. I'm
Speaker 3: happy to people send me photos and they're adorable and
Speaker 3: these are some very well loved raccoons, but it's obviously
Speaker 3: not their natural habitat. So as a Canadian, I have
Speaker 3: to say, please leave the wild animals in the wild.
Speaker 3: But I know that Americans have a different.
Speaker 1: View, right, although we have so many wonderful dogs and
Speaker 1: cats that are just waiting to live.
Speaker 3: In your house and need a home.
Speaker 1: Yes, maybe if more dogs had mask markings, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just would want to get a sharpie draw that on
Speaker 1: whatever it takes, and I do underst if there's an
Speaker 1: orphan and you rescue it and you raise it, but
Speaker 1: you know release it because that's and they can live
Speaker 1: in your backyard and come back, and you'll find that
Speaker 1: they won't.
Speaker 2: But where are they going to go?
Speaker 1: Well, according to Suzanne World Raccoon Expert, they need their
Speaker 1: space and not just from her. So each raccoon has
Speaker 1: a home range of about eighty to two hundred acres,
Speaker 1: with do raccoons strutting even further out and obviously like
Speaker 1: a city block or a rural road, the population density varies,
Speaker 1: but on average, every raccoon prefers to nap and eat
Speaker 1: garbage and worms on its own kind of ten acre estate.
Speaker 1: So when it comes to your house, you're failing to
Speaker 1: impress a raccoon.
Speaker 3: I don't get it, because that's just not what we
Speaker 3: would do. But it is the same to me as
Speaker 3: seeing a tiger in a one bedroom apartment in New York,
Speaker 3: which you know does happen too. Not a good idea.
Speaker 3: So all the animals are very sweet when they're a
Speaker 3: little bit, they all grow up, and that's a bad idea.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you some questions from listeners who wrote
Speaker 1: in sure so excited. Over three hundred questions were submitted.
Speaker 1: Oh you god, yea, I know people are excited.
Speaker 2: Don't worry.
Speaker 1: We will not ask you all of them, although people
Speaker 1: would listen. People are so thrilled about raccoons. I mean,
Speaker 1: you didn't think raccoons is going to be a single episode.
Speaker 2: Hell no.
Speaker 1: But before we even attempt to crack into questions, every
Speaker 1: week we scatter money like oily chicken bones on asphalt
Speaker 1: to a deserving cause. And this week, doctor Suzann McDonald
Speaker 1: chose Toronto Wildlife Center. And I could tell you what
Speaker 1: they do, but instead, like a creep, I went and
Speaker 1: found a published letter from twenty nineteen in which doctor
Speaker 1: McDonald wrote, over the past ten years, it's been increasingly
Speaker 1: obvious that the work that the Toronto Wildlife Center does
Speaker 1: to rescue, care, and treat injured, sick and orphaned wildlife
Speaker 1: is an essential service for the area. I personally received
Speaker 1: dozens of emails and calls from residents throughout the summer
Speaker 1: months asking for help with injured or orphaned raccoons, and
Speaker 1: I always send them to the TWC. Natalie Carvinen and
Speaker 1: the TWC do an extraordinary job of helping many thousands
Speaker 1: of animals and dealing with many thousands of residents. The
Speaker 1: numbers are staggering and only increasing as humans continue to
Speaker 1: encroach on wildlife habitat. We desperately need the TWC in
Speaker 1: the city. So much applause and many kudos and donations
Speaker 1: went to them. More info is available at Toronto wildlifecenter
Speaker 1: dot com and center is spelled Centre because Canada. So
Speaker 1: that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show,
Speaker 1: who you'll probably hear about now. Okay, this first question
Speaker 1: comes via patrons Anika, Julie, April, Ethan Buttone, Haley Squire,
Speaker 1: Jenna A. Austin Santiago, and Alison Hatts, as well as
Speaker 1: Elizabeth age eight, Sorry Lauren for the sweares and this
Speaker 1: who needed to know about their bandit core aesthetic. A
Speaker 1: lot of people wanted to know how their mask and
Speaker 1: striped markings, how their markings evolved?
Speaker 2: Why are they wearing accessories?
Speaker 3: Well, nobody really knows, So that's the answer is whenever
Speaker 3: you ask a question, but why did they did you know?
Speaker 3: Why do elephants have trunks? Why do then we just
Speaker 3: do the function of it is disputed. Some people think
Speaker 3: it is a species identification tool, so that raccoons can
Speaker 3: tell other raccoons by the way they look. It seems
Speaker 3: an odd location for that, but you know, in the
Speaker 3: mask in the face. But some people think because they
Speaker 3: work at night, it's kind of like, you know, like
Speaker 3: football players put black goop under their eyes to cut
Speaker 3: down reflection. Apparently I'm not a big football player person,
Speaker 3: and so the idea is that does it as well,
Speaker 3: so it will maximize the available light. Their vision isn't
Speaker 3: super great at night, and so anything they can get
Speaker 3: to help them with that is good. So it probably
Speaker 3: does serve that function. I don't know if that's why
Speaker 3: it evolved, but there are raccoons without masks, so it
Speaker 3: is a trait that varies across the subspecies of raccoons.
Speaker 3: You know, the color of the raccoon does vary across
Speaker 3: birth America, and the darkness of the mask does vary
Speaker 3: as well. So it does make sense that it would
Speaker 3: be a species identification thing in that case that you know,
Speaker 3: a little female raccoon would say, oh, that one looks
Speaker 3: just like me, really dark eyes or no mask at all,
Speaker 3: So that's how it could evolve for sure.
Speaker 2: Aha, Okay, that's good to know listeners.
Speaker 1: Alton Zazie says, my question about trash bandas is did
Speaker 1: they evolve to instinctively sniff out the best opportunities to
Speaker 1: do crime? Essentially, a ton of people use the term
Speaker 1: trash bandas. I'm curious how you feel about the term.
Speaker 1: So yes, patrons who called them trash pandas looking at you.
Speaker 1: RJ Deutsche and a dow Wigger, Joe Mueller, Josh Baby,
Speaker 1: Kaitlyn Schmouse, first time question, Ashley Dent, Spencer Heart, Sidney Bowers,
Speaker 1: Alec Grunman, Gary Young, Link, Susy Kroger, Emily Lance, Liz
Speaker 1: s Jade Poehler, Joy Kid, Margo Freed, Paige McLaughlin, Lizzie Martinez, Joy, Caltheimer,
Speaker 1: and doctor Tiganwall who's so scared of raccoons she couldn't
Speaker 1: even submit a question. And don't worry, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to call you out publicly though.
Speaker 2: Oops.
Speaker 1: Also second part smell first time question asker the other
Speaker 1: other Amy Bobby Minard and Yes Sultan Zazie who asked
Speaker 1: about sniffing out opportunities to do crime, and patron Rebecca
Speaker 1: shown killed asked do they really gang up on people?
Speaker 1: Or did those seven raccoons just chase my cousin home
Speaker 1: because her waitress uniform smelled like pie lot to process here?
Speaker 1: And do they have a nose for garbage?
Speaker 3: Well, I actually think the term is really great and
Speaker 3: I use it too sometimes solo the pandas are so
Speaker 3: you know, I'm a biologist. I'm like, well, they're not
Speaker 3: actually pandas you know, I'm always a little bit picky
Speaker 3: that way. But yeah, it's a cute term, so I
Speaker 3: have no problem with that. They didn't even all the
Speaker 3: nose for garbage. But they do have a good nose,
Speaker 3: so just like your dog has a really good nose,
Speaker 3: So raccoon noses and dog noses are pretty pretty darn good.
Speaker 3: It just so happens to serve them really well in
Speaker 3: the city sniffing out garbage. And it's not their nose
Speaker 3: so much as they can tell there's food in a place,
Speaker 3: just like your dog and your cat can, just like
Speaker 3: we can to some extent. But you know, raccoons have
Speaker 3: the added advantage of having those little hands, so they
Speaker 3: can actually get into the garbage. Your dog can smell
Speaker 3: that there's something in the garbage can, but can't get
Speaker 3: into the garbage can, but the raccoons can.
Speaker 1: And so the raccoons aren't plotting saying it looks like
Speaker 1: you have to twist it to the left before you
Speaker 1: lift it to the right. They're really just like approaching
Speaker 1: it with fingers and chaos.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, let's see what we have to do. They
Speaker 3: bang on it, they knock it. Usually the go to
Speaker 3: is knock it over, roll it around a bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I've got over eight hundred hours of video of
Speaker 3: raccoons attacking garbage cans, and that's what they all do.
Speaker 3: So there's no genius raccoon out there. They're just all
Speaker 3: just bashing it. And any raccoon that's been able to
Speaker 3: figure out these raccoon resistant bins in Toronto has just
Speaker 3: broken into them. There have been viral videos showing raccoons
Speaker 3: opening the mechanism on these bins, but the mechanisms are broken.
Speaker 3: So that's not really fair, is it. So they just
Speaker 3: they break stuff, that's what they do.
Speaker 1: So just let this be less than everyone. Just try
Speaker 1: and fail a bunch until everyone assumes you're a genius.
Speaker 1: I got to hand it to them, or do I
Speaker 1: have to pot to them? Y'all wanted to know in
Speaker 1: Abby Joe's words, what's with the fingies? And also, of
Speaker 1: course why do they wash things with them?
Speaker 3: Actually, raccoons evolved. They're called a riverine species, so cleverly
Speaker 3: that means they evolved around rivers, so they evolve to
Speaker 3: kind of catch their food at the edges of rivers,
Speaker 3: and that's why they put food in the water all
Speaker 3: the time. So their Latin name is washing actually washing rat,
Speaker 3: but washing bear. Lots of people call them that. So
Speaker 3: their hands evolved in a very special way in that
Speaker 3: they have much more sensitive abilities to detect what an
Speaker 3: object is through their fingers, through their hands than through
Speaker 3: their eyes. So they see with their hands, they feel things,
Speaker 3: and that translates into what the object is. So it's
Speaker 3: very difficult for humans to imagine this. But if you
Speaker 3: think of a dolphin using sonar, that's also difficult for
Speaker 3: us to imagine. They send out sonar and they get
Speaker 3: a picture of what's ahead of them. Raccoons use their
Speaker 3: hands and they get a picture in their head of
Speaker 3: what they're feeling. So they can do that underwater. So
Speaker 3: if you give raccoons food and there's water nearby and
Speaker 3: the food is really hard, they often put it in
Speaker 3: the water. They will put everything in the water eventually,
Speaker 3: but they like search for food in water. So I
Speaker 3: did a little test with a bunch of hot dog
Speaker 3: pieces in a bunch of rocks. They're all the same size,
Speaker 3: and just timed how long it would take them to
Speaker 3: pull the hot dogs out from the rocks that are
Speaker 3: all submerged underwater. It takes them like five seconds. They
Speaker 3: can They're super super fast at that. If there was
Speaker 3: some sort of skilled testing game that they could play
Speaker 3: to do that, they would win over every other species.
Speaker 3: They're really really good at that. So they work at night.
Speaker 3: They need to rely on things other than supervision, and
Speaker 3: what they do is they rely on super sense of touch.
Speaker 2: So they're not washing as most of us grew up thinking.
Speaker 3: No, they're not washing the thing. They may be softening
Speaker 3: the thing, it may make it more palatable, but they
Speaker 3: are If you watch released raccoons that have been that
Speaker 3: were orphaned, that were hand reared and then released to
Speaker 3: the wild. And I was lucky enough to go the
Speaker 3: day that we release them out, and the first they
Speaker 3: do is they go down to a river and they
Speaker 3: all put their hands in the water. Yeah, it's really amazing.
Speaker 3: These are raccoons that have never done that before ever,
Speaker 3: and that's the first thing they all do. So it
Speaker 3: is a very innate thing. It's an innate behavior that
Speaker 3: they do that. And they catch crayfish or crawfish, I
Speaker 3: don't know how you say it, and insects and fish
Speaker 3: and all sorts of things right by the edge of
Speaker 3: the water. So in the wild, that's what they do.
Speaker 3: In downtown Toronto's they go in our little backyard ponds,
Speaker 3: they go in our swimming pools, they go in wherever
Speaker 3: they can find a source of water, because that's what
Speaker 3: they are born to do.
Speaker 1: Okay, So with around three quarters of the sensory part
Speaker 1: of the brain dedicated to their tactile business, that is
Speaker 1: what raccoons are doing with their cute, soft, tiny, creepy, begging,
Speaker 1: adorable hands which I'm really sorry to have to hand
Speaker 1: deliver this news. They're actually pause, they're not even hands.
Speaker 1: Most folks who call the shots on these kind of
Speaker 1: matter say, you got to have an imposable bum to
Speaker 1: count as hands. Our little garbage munkers don't. So the
Speaker 1: next time you watch one ubscond with half of your burrito,
Speaker 1: just check it out. You'll see that it's prayer hand
Speaker 1: emojiing your lunch instead of gorilla gripping it, if you will.
Speaker 1: So there are your thumb answers Katie Winchester at Dney
Speaker 1: to Journey and Jessica Roth, who had asked any hope
Speaker 1: of a texting raccoon one day? They don't need thumbs
Speaker 1: to text. I wouldn't put it past them, and they'll
Speaker 1: probably figure out TikTok before me. But yes, raccoons evolve
Speaker 1: to live near water, just bellied up to the river buffet,
Speaker 1: their ancestors and their pastoral relatives, just out there snacking
Speaker 1: on grubs and all kinds of aquatic critters, which is
Speaker 1: why when they go to dunk a cotton candy treat
Speaker 1: in water to figure out what the hell this pink
Speaker 1: cloud is, it causes them to have an existential breakdown.
Speaker 1: Leora and Emily Fitzpatrick, who asked about those videos of
Speaker 1: mystified raccoons, I'm assuming you asked because it made a
Speaker 1: mark on my soul as well, just the fear of hope,
Speaker 1: the mistrust of happiness, safety evaporated.
Speaker 2: Slipping through our n thumbs.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about lies. So patron Jesse asked, is
Speaker 1: it true that they will eat slugs, but first they
Speaker 1: roll them in the dirt to make them less slimy.
Speaker 2: Please, I'm dying to know if this is flim flame.
Speaker 1: Or not, Jesse wrote, Jesse, what raccoons don't have time
Speaker 1: to meal prep? Never mind, it's actually true. I fact
Speaker 1: checked it. Yes, yes, they use their non hands to
Speaker 1: whip up dirt encrusted slugcakes.
Speaker 2: But I wonder are they any good?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: Christie's Immercoyles wrote in and said, my five year old
Speaker 1: would like to know what is it raccoon's favorite food?
Speaker 2: Do you have them fill out surveys menus?
Speaker 3: No, but they do tell you by what they eat,
Speaker 3: so I have tests and a lot of foods. They
Speaker 3: do enjoy a nice cat food. I'll tell you that
Speaker 3: they enjoy a nice can of cat food WebCAT food.
Speaker 3: They enjoy that very much. In fact, it's easier to
Speaker 3: say what they don't enjoy than what they do enjoy.
Speaker 3: But they do very much enjoy KFC. They do very
Speaker 3: much enjoy pizza. They pick the tomatoes and the onions
Speaker 3: off because they don't like onions. They do enjoy tacos.
Speaker 3: Indian food is a great favorite. They do enjoy. They
Speaker 3: do enjoy sweets, but not as much they like nuts
Speaker 3: and things. If it's like a Snicker's bar over a
Speaker 3: Mars bar, because the Snickers has the nuts, so they
Speaker 3: will always go for the higher calorie. They very much
Speaker 3: enjoy McDonald samburger's and get enough of those. Anything that
Speaker 3: you would enjoy and they will enjoy as well. Onions, No,
Speaker 3: not a big fan.
Speaker 2: Oh good to know.
Speaker 1: Should anyone be feeding them or said?
Speaker 2: No, that's generally a bad idea.
Speaker 3: Bad idea unless you want to have them come every night,
Speaker 3: which is what mine are doing right now. Yeah, oh
Speaker 3: my god, they're ripping my coat and every here talking
Speaker 3: about overwhelm with raccoons. Yeah, they will. You will have
Speaker 3: raccoons coming every night, and when you stop feeding them,
Speaker 3: they get quite angry about it. So they expect some
Speaker 3: damage out of your property because they will start trying
Speaker 3: to get your attention by ripping, weather stripping off and
Speaker 3: whatever you got. They'll they'll do some damage. So I
Speaker 3: would not recommend that at all. Feisty in Toronto when
Speaker 3: it's super super cold, the raccoons are again not hibernating,
Speaker 3: but they are much less active. But if they do
Speaker 3: come out and the weather the winter is very, very long.
Speaker 3: I say to people, yes, you're put out some catholine
Speaker 3: for them, just to keep them from starving to death.
Speaker 1: Helen Langal first time question ask her said, a friend
Speaker 1: of mine told me that most raccoons are functionally bisexual.
Speaker 2: Is that true?
Speaker 3: How was your friend? How would that person know that? Home?
Speaker 3: Oh god, the questions I have. I just I don't know,
Speaker 3: functionally bisexual?
Speaker 2: No, No, okay, no, not.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, maybe they're watching different raccoons, but no,
Speaker 3: I've not seen that. I'm not sure what behavior they're
Speaker 3: referring to. Males do wrestle same sex. There's wrestling, but
Speaker 3: I think that's a bit of a projection to call
Speaker 3: that bisexuality. I'm not quite sure what they're referring to.
Speaker 3: But if they have video, I would love to see it.
Speaker 2: Get in touch, of course.
Speaker 1: And by the bye, I went down some real raccoon
Speaker 1: tubes looking for the literature on this, and it's credited
Speaker 1: to the Seminole nineteen ninety nine McMillan release Biological Exuberance,
Speaker 1: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, written by Canadian biologist Bruce Bagamel,
Speaker 1: who listed raccoons among animals who engage in non heterosexual
Speaker 1: and non reproductive physical sexual affection. If you will, and
Speaker 1: this book is legit. It's often cited by anthropologists and biologists,
Speaker 1: and if you listen to the neuro Endochronology episode on
Speaker 1: sex and Gender and Biology with doctor Daniel Foul, this
Speaker 1: is a reference book that they often cite, and the author,
Speaker 1: Bruce Begamel, even is credited with helping reverse some homophobic
Speaker 1: sodomy laws in the US, but culturally in an extremely
Speaker 1: online way.
Speaker 2: I asked around about.
Speaker 1: This connection between being by and being a raccoon, and
Speaker 1: it seems that the general consensus is kind of a
Speaker 1: self deprecatingly ironic, identifying with overlooked trash animals who persevere
Speaker 1: despite being perceived as messy, but also hell acute. So
Speaker 1: all those in favor say by. Also, if you see
Speaker 1: any queer raccoons, get at doctor McDonald on time at
Speaker 1: Twitter dot com slash York Psyche, and her avatar is
Speaker 1: very easily recognizable. It's a photo of her head being
Speaker 1: scaled by a raccoon, which I assumed she was okay with,
Speaker 1: unlike when they find her garbage. Liz Davis and a
Speaker 1: bunch of other people want to know. How do we
Speaker 1: keep the little bandits out of the trash?
Speaker 2: Do you cover your trash and foil? What do you do?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really hard. I keep mine in a locked garage,
Speaker 3: and trust me, I have been through a lot of this,
Speaker 3: so I sympathize. So I keep my bins in a
Speaker 3: locked garage and I cover, you know, bungee cords. I
Speaker 3: use them. If they get into your garage, though, then
Speaker 3: they'll figure it out eventually. But that's the only thing.
Speaker 3: We have to be smarter than they are. We just
Speaker 3: have to keep it out of their way. If you
Speaker 3: put them at the you know, in the driveway at
Speaker 3: the curb, the raccoons will get into them. They will.
Speaker 3: They have a lot of time on their hands. The
Speaker 3: urban raccoons have our fat, and they have nothing else
Speaker 3: to do. They will spend I've seen a female spend
Speaker 3: all night trying to get into a trash can, and
Speaker 3: she has nothing else to do. The ones in the
Speaker 3: wild are on the edge of starvation. They don't have
Speaker 3: time for this. But the ones in the city, they
Speaker 3: have all the time in the world, and they will
Speaker 3: work at it. So just keep your bins away from
Speaker 3: them and everything will be fine. I put my garbage
Speaker 3: bins out in the morning that the trash gets removed.
Speaker 3: I don't put them out the night before because I
Speaker 3: am tired of picking up stuff off the street. And
Speaker 3: all my neighbors are like, haha, they even hit you,
Speaker 3: and you're the one who knows about them, and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: well yeah, you may know, but all you know is
Speaker 3: they're gonna get into it if you leave it. It's like
Speaker 3: it's an imitation to a buffet. Why wouldn't they Yes,
Speaker 3: why wouldn't they get into it?
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if you're Canada's Queen of raccoons and
Speaker 1: you're really vulnerable.
Speaker 3: Very sad. Yeah, no, everyone is vulnerable, So just be smarter,
Speaker 3: use your giant cortex, and keep your bins under lock
Speaker 3: and key until you have to put them out. If
Speaker 3: you just leave them there, you're just training them to
Speaker 3: get into them. So the more time you give them
Speaker 3: to figure it out, the more they will figure it out.
Speaker 3: So don't make it easy for them.
Speaker 1: Any representations of raccoons in books and movies and TV,
Speaker 1: Guardians of Galaxy, anything that they gets it right or
Speaker 1: rely wrong.
Speaker 3: Well, actually I thought the Guardians of the galaxy was fantastic,
Speaker 3: and I really I love rocket.
Speaker 2: Question. What if I see something that I want to
Speaker 2: take and it belongs to someone else, you will be arrested.
Speaker 2: But what if I want it more than the person
Speaker 2: who has it?
Speaker 3: And I had? You know, I was a little bit
Speaker 3: skeptical before I saw it. But he is one ordre
Speaker 3: percent for himself. I know he has a group and
Speaker 3: all that, but he you know, he would leave his
Speaker 3: team members in a heartbeat if it was the same himself.
Speaker 3: That's absolutely true. Raccoons would do that without hesitation. I
Speaker 3: think it's the cartoons that makes them seem all cuddly
Speaker 3: and funny and whatever. That that's the reason racoons have
Speaker 3: been exported around the world, which is a very very
Speaker 3: bad idea, and now they are an invasive species in
Speaker 3: other countries because there have been cartoons that have shown
Speaker 3: that these raccoons are adorable and clearly not even an
Speaker 3: actual animal, And so people get them and go, oh
Speaker 3: wait a minute, this thing bit me and is destroying
Speaker 3: my house and now I have to let it go outside.
Speaker 1: So people decide I'm just going to quietly release this
Speaker 1: hairy tornado. Nothing to see here, and now those little
Speaker 1: robbers of hearts have made their way to Europe and
Speaker 1: Japan to eat slugs and look for sidewalk curry. And
Speaker 1: also the males use their penis bones. That's right, Count
Speaker 1: Bacula strikes again to get it on so loudly and
Speaker 1: lady raccoons have sometimes up to five babies at a time,
Speaker 1: So many.
Speaker 3: Babies, and then that's just a disaster. So raccoons have
Speaker 3: the potential, with climate change to actually take over much
Speaker 3: of the planet. They will eat every native species that exists.
Speaker 3: No one has defenses against them, and it is a
Speaker 3: very bad idea. So I think those depictions of raccoons
Speaker 3: and cartoons as being super cute and lovely may be
Speaker 3: cute for kids, but it gives people a wrong idea
Speaker 3: of what a raccoon is actually Like I always ask people,
Speaker 3: it's like, have you ever met one? Because if you
Speaker 3: everything you want to go to a raccoon cafe, which
Speaker 3: have actually opened in South Korea, then you've clearly never
Speaker 3: met a raccoon, because that seems like terrible, a terrible
Speaker 3: idea to me. They're mighty, they scratch. I cannot imagine
Speaker 3: to go to a head cafe. Cats are lovely.
Speaker 1: Can just imagine them strolling by and dipping someone else's
Speaker 1: croissant into your tea.
Speaker 3: Absolutely and then throwing like, honestly, it's just I don't
Speaker 3: I like them very much. Obviously, I do not have misconceptions,
Speaker 3: and those misconceptions do come from those media depictions. To
Speaker 3: get back to your question is like, yeah, the cartoons
Speaker 3: are difficult. And you know there's all those videos on
Speaker 3: YouTube and TikTok of raccoons doing cute things, and they
Speaker 3: are indeed cute, but it's never really ending very well
Speaker 3: for the raccoon. You know, some people are super devoted
Speaker 3: to their raccoon and they do take a lot of
Speaker 3: time because they will be very destructive.
Speaker 1: Is that your least favorite thing about being a raccoon
Speaker 1: studier or a piknologist pisonologist. Well we'll figure that out
Speaker 1: in post, but is there what would you say? I
Speaker 1: always asked this at the very end. What would you
Speaker 1: say is the worst thing about raccoons or the thing
Speaker 1: that is hardest about your job?
Speaker 3: Oh? Well, my job is not hard at all. Honestly.
Speaker 3: I get to study animals and it's fantastic. So there's
Speaker 3: nothing that's hard, anything that's hard is because I've made
Speaker 3: a horrible mistake, and it's usually it is always my mistake,
Speaker 3: whether I'm working with elephants or raccoons or whatever it is,
Speaker 3: it's always something dumb that I've done. So the animals
Speaker 3: themselves never are difficult. You just have to know you
Speaker 3: have to start to think like them and appreciate what
Speaker 3: they do and how they view the world. And so
Speaker 3: that's what I try to do. And I always regret
Speaker 3: it when I don't do that, So I try to.
Speaker 3: I see them as a human, what a human would do.
Speaker 3: I misjudge that way. So I would say they never
Speaker 3: do anything that make my job hard. I make my part.
Speaker 3: They're lovely, Honestly, they're just a lovely little species. They're
Speaker 3: not trying to hurt anybody. They're just trying to get by.
Speaker 3: They're doing their job. They work at night, they're trying
Speaker 3: to be quiet. They're raccoons. You know, we just have
Speaker 3: to learn a little bit more about how to work
Speaker 3: with them as opposed to against them.
Speaker 1: What is your favorite thing about what you do or
Speaker 1: about raccoons?
Speaker 3: Okay, well, well about raccoons. Honestly, I just love watching them.
Speaker 3: I was just watching them last night actually playing. It
Speaker 3: just pleases me so much to watch them play, even
Speaker 3: though they're on my deck, playing in my patio furniture
Speaker 3: and you know, ripping it to shreds. But still they're
Speaker 3: so cute and they are just so I don't know
Speaker 3: so in the moment and they just have such fun
Speaker 3: until it all devolves and they start screaming, But there
Speaker 3: is a moment there where it's just so wonderful and
Speaker 3: pure and lovely, and that makes everything that makes me happy.
Speaker 3: Or watching them trying to figure out a task that
Speaker 3: really pleases me any species. I love watching animals trying
Speaker 3: to figure something out and then achieving what they want.
Speaker 3: I just love that. I just love it when they
Speaker 3: they get a thing that they've tried for. It pleased
Speaker 3: me humans too, so just I love that. So it's
Speaker 3: a great privilege to be able to watch all these
Speaker 3: animals do their things. And I can't imagine a better job.
Speaker 1: How interesting to be an animal trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how animals are figuring things out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I always tell my students that it's like
Speaker 3: raccoons are not sitting around trying to figure out how
Speaker 3: do we work? We're the only species that actually have
Speaker 3: a job devoted to figuring out how other species think
Speaker 3: and how they work. That is amazing, like human brains
Speaker 3: are amazing. Just think about it for a minute. Incredible.
Speaker 3: But yes, other species, you know, they do watch us
Speaker 3: and they do get our routines down. So I kind
Speaker 3: of like that too when I realize that they understand
Speaker 3: that if they come at five PM, I will be
Speaker 3: home and they can get some snacks. So that pleads
Speaker 3: me to that we kind of have a mutual understanding
Speaker 3: that please.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for disseminating such important and beloved
Speaker 1: raccoon information.
Speaker 3: It's my pleasure. And I will tell you, if you
Speaker 3: want to keep raccoons away, just cut an onion in
Speaker 3: half and rub it on whatever you don't want them
Speaker 3: to go here. It does work, and it's cheap. So
Speaker 3: sell all these products on the internet. But all I
Speaker 3: do is just use onions from the fridge and just
Speaker 3: put them on whatever. It does keep them away hot too.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: So there you go, ask crafty people chaotic questions, because
Speaker 1: now you know that you don't have to be perfect
Speaker 1: or even the smartest. You just have to keep banging
Speaker 1: away at things and be hungry for Discovery. Maybe there's
Speaker 1: a chicken on the other side. Also, raccoons are kind
Speaker 1: of a look but maybe don't touch kind of friend.
Speaker 1: Just get a cat and follow doctor McDonald at your
Speaker 1: psych on Twitter. Her website is linked on the show notes.
Speaker 1: We're at Ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Aliward
Speaker 1: with one l on both at TikTok, I'm at ali
Speaker 1: underscore Ologies where I'm posting badly and more links will
Speaker 1: be up at aliward dot com, slash Ology, slash pro
Speaker 1: Scionology and another episode coming your way with more raccoon
Speaker 1: experts and their favorite things about raccoons next week. And
Speaker 1: thank you Aaron Talbert who admins the Ologies podcast Facebook group,
Speaker 1: Shannon and Bonnie for merch help. Transcripts are by Emily
Speaker 1: White of the Wordery, Caleb Patten. Bleeps episodes and free
Speaker 1: transcripts and Bleeped episodes are up at alleyware dot com.
Speaker 1: Slash Ologies extras, scheduling and business help by Noel Dilworth
Speaker 1: and Susan Hales. The Grodriguez Thomas and Stephen Ray Morris
Speaker 1: edt of Thesmologies episodes that come out every two weeks.
Speaker 1: Those are bite sized and Classroom Safe. Jared Sleeper is
Speaker 1: the lead editor and is up at all hours helping
Speaker 1: me work on this. Currently it's three oh four in
Speaker 1: the morning. Nick Thorburn wrote and performed the theme music
Speaker 1: And if you listen to the end, you hear a secret.
Speaker 1: And this week the secret is a big ologies milestone
Speaker 1: is right around the corner, and I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: to celebrate it. But next month it looks like we
Speaker 1: are going to turn over the ondometer to sixty nine million,
Speaker 1: four hundred and twenty thousand, six hundred and sixty six lessons.
Speaker 3: It's gonna happen in January.
Speaker 1: It looks like so I don't know which one of
Speaker 1: you is going to be hitting play on that, but
Speaker 1: it's gonna be special anyway. Happy holidays, More raccoons next week, okay,
Speaker 1: verbe
Speaker 2: Hey, all right, Little King tresh Melt found himself a
Speaker 2: piece of pizza.