[foo-bar-bat]

Raccoons have been living literally inside of houses for centuries.

One was kept as a pet in Jamestown Virginia in the 1600s. Another lived in the White House in the 1900s. Surely, not a decade has passed between have there been NO domesticated raccoons in the US? If living near humans changes animals, that started at least 25,000 years ago here in North America. Not recently.

My neighbors had a pet raccoon growing up. It lived inside but would come and go.

The people who wrote this article seem out of touch with the topic they chose to pretend to be experts about?

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> Surely, not a decade has passed between have there been NO domesticated raccoons in the US?

An animal of wild parentage that was raised by humans is tame but not domesticated. So no, there's aren't really domesticated racoons, only tame ones.

Domestication is a process that takes many generations. It is a selective breeding process more than anything else. Animals that are 1 generation away from wild ancestors aren't domesticated, by definition.

And the last category is feral animals, "that live in the wild but are descended from domesticated individuals.".

[tharne]

> The people who wrote this article seem out of touch with the topic they chose to pretend to be experts about?

This is quickly becoming the norm for experts, unfortunately. I keep seeing more an more people with educational expertise in something that they have zero hands-on or practical experience with.

I remember being at a social event once and chatting with someone who was a business professor at any Ivy League university. Making small talk, I asked him which companies he'd worked at, and he told me that he had gone the academic track and started teaching during and after getting his PhD (in exactly what I don't remember). I remember being stunned that students would pay over $60k a year to learn about business from someone who'd never worked for or started a business.

[markdown]

> I remember being stunned that students would pay over $60k a year to learn about business from someone who'd never worked for or started a business.

Were you stunned that your parents paid lots of money to put you in front of educators from kindergarten to college?

Why would you restrict yourself to learning from one businessman when you can get learn from an educator who has distilled the experiences of hundreds if not thousands of business people?

[NetMageSCW]

Because they are terrible at distilling experience and teach bad lessons?

(MBA, anyone?)

[IAmBroom]

You had bad teachers. That isn't necessarily the rule. (I mean, it might be, but not certainly...)

[dfedbeef]

Wait till you find out lots of computer science PhDs can't program.

[lokar]

Did it say otherwise?

It primarily says they can now observe physical changes associated with domestication.

Also, keeping a wild animal as a pet does not domesticate it.

[Sharlin]

Individual animals can be tame. Only entire populations can be domesticated. Two different things.

[rozab]

That doesn't mean the process is happening naturally as asserted. For instance, wild black wolves in the US got this trait from hybridization with domesticated dogs.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2903542/

[superultra]

I think you’re mistaking slight natural adaption for domestication, and taking domestication for granted. Go into nature and try and train a wild wolf. Good luck! You can’t.

Domestication, in the way that we see having happened with dogs (and cattle, and chickens) takes a really long time.

We consider cats “domesticated” and yet demonstrably they are not. If they were much bigger, they’d eat us, and if set into wild, nearly all household cats immediately revert to feral.

I owned five ferrets once. Loved them so much, but came to the realization that there are animals that should be pets and animals that maybe shouldn’t (yet). I think we have many, many more generations before raccoons are at the same level as dogs.

[IAmBroom]

Ironic choice: ferrets are a wholly domesticated species of weasel, bred for rat hunting. They are domesticated, by any reasonable standard I'm aware of, as are cats.

I'm sorry your experience with cats hasn't been as pleasant, but I assure you they are much more domesticated than chickens - which you seem to have little experience with. Screw eating us - they'll eat each other.

[superultra]

You’re wrong on several things. There’s a big difference in the kind of domestication of dogs - which we generally think of when we think of domestication - and animals who serve extracurricular domestication, ie ferrets.

I also have 2 cats, having had 2 prior. They’re great. But it’s just science that they are not fully domesticated.

I also lived on a farm as a kid.

So let’s not make assumptions to prove an incorrect point.

[mr_toad]

Dogs can easily become feral too, feral dogs will often attack humans, and given the opportunity have been known to eat people.