Raccoon Nation
Raccoon Nation is an excellent documentary about urban raccoons. US-Americans can watch the full episode at PBS. Canadians can watch it on CBC. Visitors from other countries unfortunately have to buy it for $1.99 on Amazon if they don’t have access to an US proxy or manage to find an illegal copy somewhere.
Raccoon Nation gives an overview of the life of urban raccoons, following the endeavors of a mother and her kits in Toronto over the course of six months. The documentary prominently features Stan Gehrt and Frank-Uwe Michler, the two leading raccoon experts in the world, so the scientific accuracy is pretty good. New research results and the raccoon populations in Germany and Japan are presented as well.
It is argued that raccoons, which have been living in urban environments for many generations now, develop skills not seen in raccoons living in natural habitats. By trying to make city life harder for raccoons, humans might “accidentally” also make them smarter.
i saw this on my local pbs station a couple of weeks ago. there were a lot of fascinating observations made about their habits and how they’ve settled in to living around us. here in central california, we’ve encountered them fairly regularly over the past dozen or so years, but this program really shed some light on how they’ve taken to living in our environs.
I wonder if Sandra has seen the anime film Pom Poko, its about Tanooki (racoons)
@ Dontar:
I have, it’s…interesting…to put it mildly.
also, “…or manage to find an illegal copy somewhere.” LOL
The crows living near my house are also damn intelligent.
Dontar wrote:
Raccoon dogs (tanuki) != raccoons.
@ Jenthura:
You laugh but it is actually that bad. There’s a PBS documentary I want so much but apparently the genuine copies don’t play in the UK unless you have a multi-region DVD player which I don’t. It’s really annoying, there are people in the UK willing to pay good money to watch it and we can’t. I’m betting the same prob happens with this one too. I’ll probably end up having to watch an illegally uploaded copy on YouTube.
When I was a kid I was very fascinated and slightly obsessed with raccoons. They are very cool animals. I always felt a little weird about it. I wanted one as a pet also, but I now realize that dogs make better pets and are also cool animals in their own right. I remember proudly announcing to my parents that I wanted to be a “raccoon researcher” when I grew up, thinking I could be a biologist who studied raccoon behavior. My parents laughed at me. I think it’s really cool that Novil shares his interests with his readers instead of being ashamed of them. Another guilty confession: the reason I started liking raccoons was because of Meeko from Pocahontas. It should have been renamed the Meeko show.
That raccoon in the middle…is it squished between the doors or something? XD
There is a family of raccoons that lives near me. One day, I heard scrabbling in a garbage bin in the back lane behind where I live. I looked, and there were two raccoons in there trying to get out. They couldn’t. I found an empty box nearby and placed it into the bin. The one raccoon went to protect his mate. I made sure to keep my eyes off of them, though I did have to look at them again to be sure I wasn’t placing the box on them. I stepped back about twenty feet and watched. First one raccoon stepped up on the box to get out of that bin, then the other. I like to think those raccoons remember the human who helped them out. I’ve seen them around later, now with raccoon kits. I don’t however approach them.
illeatyourself wrote:
It’s the mother who’s trying to get her kits to come inside of the barn.
A while back I heard a rumor that the Smithsonian has a collection of raccoon skulls dating back to colonial times and that raccoon brain capacity has doubled in that time, based on the skulls. Naturally I contacted the Smithsonian and they denied having such a collection. Nevertheless, I suspect we are unintentionally making raccoons smarter, as selective pressure in urban raccoons will favor the more intelligent ones.
@ illeatyourself:
It’s the mother raccoon trying to get the cubs to climb in through the crack in the doors she is holding open.
You should watch anime film “Pom Poko” from Studio Ghbili. It was released in 1994 about raccoons fighting save their homes from encroaching human population. Very good film!
Ignore the Raccoon balls!! @ Shawn:
Shawn wrote:
That’s a film about raccoon dogs, a different species that just looks similar.
Scientists are always making stuff up, I will believe what they say about dinos the day I see one in person.
Growing up I loved dinos but the book that I read then have all changed, even the way the T-rex stands.
I don’t think dinosaures having feathers would prove evolution, but that not why I hope they didn’t have them, I hope they didn’t have them cause they look like over grown turkeys with them just like that kid on Jurassic Park said.
And I totally put the comment in the wrong spot…oops