November 30, 2018 • 19 mins
Trash pandas. Nature's ninjas. Sure, these ring-tailed rascals go by plenty of names. But whether you love 'em or hate 'em, they're clearly taking over Toronto. Will and Mango discuss everything raccoons, and why they deserve a little respect.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I guess what, Well, what's that Mango so gave? Are brilliant.
Brilliant researcher who basically powers the show was telling me
that when he moved out to l A, he lived
in this airstream trailer behind someone's house. This was as
he and his girlfriend were trying to figure out their
apartment hunter or whatever, and apparently these raccoons came by
one day and stole his girlfriend's shoes. But they were
(00:24):
just sitting outside. They came by, stole the shoes, and
then a few days after that the shoes were back
where she'd left them, except now they've been washed. They've
been so like the raccoons washed the shoes or what.
Apparently he said, this is a real thing. Like there's
this whole YouTube world of raccoon food washing videos where
the curtis just kind of like dunk their food and
(00:44):
water and then rinse it out before they eat it.
This is not real, it is. But here's the thing.
So raccoons aren't doing all that washing because they really
like clean food or they're super like sanitary. It's because
when they dunk their food, that's the way they learn
more about it. They've got these hairless front paws that
are extremely sensitive to touch, and according to the National
(01:06):
Geographic raccoons have four to five times more sensory cells
in their paws compared to most mammals, and of the
part of their brain that processes like sensory signals is
actually devoted solely to that sense of touch. And that
means they can like determine the weight, size, texture, temperature,
whatever with their paws, like just when it comes into
touch with something, that's awesome. But how does dunking food
(01:28):
and water help with this? Yeah, so that's the strangest part.
Water it's like a superpower. It increases their sense of
touch in the same way like sunlight might for our
sense of sight, Like you know when you wake up
in a dark room and step outside for the first time,
like suddenly you can see everything. And when a raccoon
dunks the grape or a pair of shoes or a
smartphone as they like to do on YouTube, into water,
(01:49):
it stimulates the nerve endings in their paws and as
a result, it opens up this whole new world to them.
And uh, it's called dousing, that's what it's called when
they dip stuff in water. But it's actually developed as
a way to help them locate food when fishing in
cold water streams. And while this is a super useful
trick to have, it's also you know, made them super
(02:10):
adorable eaters on YouTube's and YouTube celebrities. But that's just
the first of nine facts we've got about raccoons today.
Let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to part
(02:40):
Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined
by my good friend Man gueshow Ticketer and on the
other side of the soundproof glass wearing a welcome to
Pawnee shirt. That just made me smile to see this
and it's got a big picture of a raccoon on it. Now,
that's it's an impressive parks and rack reference from our
good friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Yeah. I mean, you're
not gonna see any Eagleton shirts with trash pandas on them.
(03:02):
But you know, well, how do you feel about raccoons, Like,
are you schemed out by them? Do you think they're cute?
What's your stance? Well, you know, when I was a kid,
I actually really liked raccoons because I would go over
to my grandmother's health. Actually, we've had Mamma on the
show before talking about how to live a healthy life
at the age of ninety one. But anyway, I'd go
over to her house and there was a raccoon that
(03:23):
we nicknamed Bandit, and we would feed bandit marshmallows. It's
probably a terrible idea and probably not good for them,
but we would put marshmallows out on a plate on
the back porch and Bandit would come up and eat them,
and we just we just watched. But then one time
I tried to walk out there while Bandit was eating
the marshmallows, and the scary face that it made at me,
and the noise, Like any I can't even recreate the noise.
(03:46):
It was pretty terrifying. So now, to be honest, I'm
a little bit scared of raccoons. Yeah, I'm a little
like I I feel the same way. I actually like
my first stuffed animal was a raccoon, so like, I
used to carry that around with me everywhere. I had
fondness for raccoon. But then, uh, once I learned a
little bit more about them, I've sort of maintained a
healthy distance from them. But it's curious, Well, what's your
(04:07):
first fact? Well, how about the fact that Toronto is
the self proclaimed raccoon capital of the world. That I
was in Toronto not too long ago, I had no
idea about this. I don't know how I missed this fact. Well,
I am intrigued. Go on, all right, Well, for years now,
the city has been grappling with a raccoon population boom,
unlike any scene before now. According to the Toronto Star,
(04:30):
the raccoon takeover began back in two thousand two. This
is when the city rolled out its organics bin program,
and that's where they separate compostable waste into you know,
these separate green bins. And as you'd imagine, local raccoons
were huge fans of this program because it required residents
to basically put all of these choice edible garbage items
(04:51):
into one easily tipable bin. And so pretty soon raccoons
were coming out of the woodwork and making new homes
for themselves in these neighborhoods and in people's backyards and
just kind of throughout the city. And this happened so
much so that last year the city estimated there are
now more than one hundred thousand raccoons living in Toronto.
(05:12):
I love that and that is crazy. It is well.
The infestation has become such a problem that in two
thousand and sixteen the city spent about twenty four million
dollars on this special new wastebind type that they were
putting everywhere, and it was specifically designed to keep out
the scavenging critters. Not to open one, you have to
turn a handle on the lid and unhinge this gravity lock,
(05:36):
and since raccoons don't have thumbs, the city hope that
raccoons wouldn't be able to work the handle. But as
we know from science experiments on the subject, there are
few locks on Earth that can't keep out a hungry raccoon,
and so this proved to be the case last year
when multiple videos were released showing these determined raccoons opening
the ben's lids and claiming all the garbage goodies inside there.
(05:59):
But now be fair. Out of nearly half a million bins,
only a couple dozen raccoon break ins have been reported,
and the band manufacturer does claim the break ins are
the result of faulty handles rather than the animals actually
mastering this lock system, but it doesn't seem like Toronto
will be giving up its title anytime soon. So on
(06:20):
that subject, here's the fact that might not surprise you.
Raccoons are excellent problem solvers. But the question is how
smart are raccoons exactly? And researchers have been trying to
figure this out for well over a century at this point,
but the conclusion is unanimous. If there's food involved, raccoons
are very smart. That makes sense well. One of the
earliest and most famous studies of raccoon intelligence was carried
(06:42):
out in the early d by this animal behavior scientists
named H. B. Davis, and he rounded up a dozen
wild raccoons and then presented them with a series of
puzzle boxes, each of which was baited with a piece
of food and and outfitted with a different kind of lock.
And so the task was for the raccoons to figure
out how to pick the lock, open the box retrieved
the snack. And while that, you know, might sound hard,
(07:03):
Davis actually made the task even tougher. So the raccoons
have to contend with a variety of lock types, including hooks, bolts, buttons, latches,
and levers I guess, and some boxes even had multiple locks,
like two buttons or a pushbar and a lift latch,
and so it gets pretty complicated. But despite Davis throwing
everything he could at them, in the end, the raccoons
(07:25):
could I guess, open eleven of the thirteen different complicated
lock types, and most of the animals mastered a few
of them in fewer than ten tries. So Davis suspended
the experiments for a few years, and then he returned
to the task and he found that the raccoons immediately
remembered how to operate the different locks like he started
testing this. He repeated the experiments several more times, and
(07:46):
he realized at the end of this that once they
solve a problem, they can remember exactly what that combination
is for like three years or more. That is unbelievable.
All right, Well, I know we talked about raccoons love
for washing things, especially Gabe's girlfriend's shoes. I mean that
seems like a great trick, right, Like you just leave
all your laundry out and hope the raccoon laundry service
(08:08):
returns it. Press unfolded, right, But I don't know how
the press then folded part, but it's uh, it's impressive
either way. But that's the interesting thing is that the
raccoons are actually named for their little hands. So the
word raccoon was derived from the Powhatton tribes name aurankan,
which means the animal that scratches with its hands. And
I'm certain that I mispronounced that, but I did find
(08:29):
that fact interesting, and it was one of them, right,
I said hands, thank you. I know how to say
hands now, But it was one of the first Palhatton
words ever recorded by English colonists at Jamestown. But they
weren't the only ones to notice the raccoon's pause, as
it's really it's defining feature. The ass tech name for
raccoons was actually a word that means the one who
takes everything in its hands. So weirdly, the raccoon's scientific
(08:53):
name also takes its cues from the animals dexterous pause.
It's called the price ion lodar, which is a Neo
Latin word and it translates to the before dog washer.
I guess because raccoons came around before dogs. But it
is funny that like everyone zoned in on that hands feature,
(09:14):
the pause feature, right, like, like I feel like I
I look at their cute mass or whatever their fuzzy tails.
So I'm gonna take this back to Calvin Coolidge, who,
as you might remember, had a pet raccoon when he
was president in the nineteen twenties. And that's a fact
I feel like we've all heard and remembered, but I
never knew how it came to be, And Gabe pulled
us up for me. So the first thing to know
(09:35):
is that Calvin and his wife Grace Coolidge were about
the biggest animal lovers ever to live in the White House, right,
and the whole country knew it. So the couple had
like this menagerie of animals on the grounds, including like
a goose, a donkey, a wallaby of all things. And
they have this collection of pets that the press called
the Pennsylvania Avenue Zoo, and Coolidge supporters were so eager
(09:58):
to like add to this presidential zoo that they would
just routinely sent him these unsolicited pets. So like he
got cats, dogs, and canaries, which are pretty standard things.
And then history dot com says he received a black
haired bear from Mexico and African pygmy hippopotamus from a
rubber bagnate, and even a pair of live line cubs,
(10:19):
which the fiscally conservative president gave the less than fuzzy
names Tax Reduction and Budget Bureau. Of course, the raccoon
was also a gift from this admirer, this woman from
Mississippi named Vinnie Joyce, except that Vinnie hadn't sent the
raccoon to be a pet. She actually intended the animal
to be slaughtered and served as an entree at that
(10:39):
year's Thanksgiving. But I guess at the time raccoon meat
was something of a delicacy, and in fact, the first
edition of Joy of Cooking has a recipe for raccoon.
But um so weird, I know. Thankfully for the raccoon, though,
President Coolidge did not share the country's taste for raccoon
and decided to grant the massed animal this pardon and
(10:59):
he kept as a pet instead. They named Rebecca. And
it's pretty funny, like they tried to keep her in
the house. She clawsed upholstery, she tears apart clothing, She
just generally runs the muck. But then the cool just
decided to build her this wooden treehouse outside on the
south lawn, and they were just obsessed with her. They'd
walk around on a collar and leaf. The caller said,
(11:20):
Rebecca Raccoon of the White House. On it. She even
participated in the Easter egg roll, though apparently that was
kind of the last raw because she um clawed at
children and and then kept running away from the White House,
so like the staffers had to keep chasing her down,
but they decided to donate her to the National Zoo,
where she lived happily and was heralded as the first
(11:41):
Raccoon of the White House. What a great story. All right, Well,
why don't we talk a little bit about raccoon masks,
because you were saying that that probably would have been
the defining feature that I would have thought about if
I was trying to give this creature a name. And
you know, raccoons have always been viewed as bandits in
popular culture, and that's partly for good reason, Like they
make off with whatever they can get their weird little
(12:02):
hands on. And let's be honest, those little black masks
they wear aren't helping matters, since it just makes them
look like these little furry outlaws. They may be cute,
but they definitely look like outlaws. Yeah, it's like in
that Secret Pizza Party, which, yeah, from the guys who
made dragons love tacos. But uh, you know, I I
love that book so much. Just how that raccoon like
dreams of stealing pizza and like has all these ideas
(12:25):
and and you know he finally does it because he
tricks people by thinking he has a mask on. Yeah. Well,
obviously they don't wear the eyemasks to be stealthy or stylish,
but you know, these markings actually help the raccoons, and
it helps them to see more clearly. So according to researchers,
the black fur kind of functions like you know, like
(12:46):
you would put grease pain or like black stickers that
athletes wear under their eyes during games, so that dark
color absorbs incoming lights so that the glare doesn't interfere
with their vision. And raccoons use this trick to see
better in the dark. Actually, so their mass cut down
on the peripheral light that might be out there in
the dark, and it makes it easier for them to
(13:06):
perceive contrast and and tell different objects apart from each other.
I had actually never heard this before. Yeah, that's really fascinating.
So here's a bit of a surprising research I found. So,
according to Suzanne McDonald, who is this psychology professor and
biologist at York University near Toronto, the raccoon capital of
the world. I guess uh, city raccoons tend to be
(13:28):
smarter than their country cousins. And in two thousand fourteen,
she outfitted city raccoons with GPS callers to see how
they handled themselves compared to country raccoons, and in one experiment,
she discovered that the city dwellers had learned to avoid
major intersections altogether. And in another test, she found that
most city raccoons were capable of opening trash can lids,
(13:48):
while the country raccoons would like they never quite figured
it out. In fact, they smell food at the bottom
and just like kind of powed it, but they never
understood how the lids system worked at all. And uh,
you know, it's it's funny because, like um, she she
was comparing the two, the city raccoons just went for
the lid every single time. But you know, I think
it's an interesting test. I do hope it doesn't lead
(14:10):
to like stereotyping of country raccoons, because I'm sure there
are some smart country raccoons out there and and they
have other talents that they're way better at. But uh,
it is a fun study. Yeah, that's pretty funny. Well,
I know we've got two more facts to go, but
before we get to those, let's take a quick break.
(14:42):
Welcome back to part time Genius where we're talking raccoons.
All right, mego, what is your last fact going to be?
How about we talk about Japan, which has been dealing
with an out of control of raccoon population for about
forty years now. So Toronto isn't the only cosmopolitan place
with this issue. And surprisingly, Jeff and his whole mess
can be traced back to this beloved children's cartoon, really
(15:05):
a cartoon. Yeah. In ninety seven, this animation company released
an anime adaptation of this memoir called Rascal Memoir of
a Better Era, And both the book and the animated
series are about this author, Sterling North, and this baby
raccoon named Rascal that he kept for a year as
a boy. And the anime cartoon series. It premiered in
(15:26):
January of that year in and then ran a new
episode each week for the entire year, and pretty much
the whole country was swept up in raccoon fever. So
families began importing these pet raccoons from North America so
their kids could re enact what they'd seen on screen,
and the trend became so popular that for years after
the cartoons released, more than fifteen hundred raccoons were brought
(15:49):
to Japanese shores each month, and as you can probably guess,
things got out of hand pretty quickly. So Japanese families
soon discovered that real raccoons aren't as loyal or cuddly
as you might see on TV. The real life versions
might trash your house, attack your kids, and and also
eat way way more than you think, so they aren't
(16:11):
great roommates. But when when the pet raccoons grew too
larger unruly, many families just released them into the wild,
and eventually the Japanese government got wise they banned the
important ownership of raccoons, but it was already far too late,
and today the descendants of that first wave of raccoons
have spread to forty two of the country's forty seven prefectures,
(16:31):
and they're believed to cause about three thousand dollars worth
of damage to food crops every year. Oh wow, so,
so what about the cartoon like, did it kind of
fade into obscurity after you know, people lost their love
for these raccoons or what. No, Rascal Raccoon is actually
still an icon there and he's this merchandizing powerhouse in Japan.
And of course the original series is still considered a classic.
(16:51):
And you know you get that right, Like, as awful
as they are, cartoon raccoons are still pretty cute. So definitely,
So what are you gonna with? All right, Well, how
about a little fact about marshmallows. You know I shared
the fact at the beginning there. So last year, a
team of scientists put eight raccoons through what is known
as the Asop's Fable test to see whether they could
(17:12):
recognize cause and effect. So you might be familiar with
the fable in question, and it's the one where a
thirsty crow can't access the water at the bottom of
a picture, so the bird cleverly drops pebbles into the
picture until the water level rises enough for the crow
to be able to take a drink. I vainly remember that.
I don't know what the moral of that story is,
I do remember that, So how's it related to the test.
(17:34):
We're not going to get into the morals of this today,
it's it's just way too deep for us, but well
for the raccoon version. Researchers knew that the water alone
wouldn't be a big enough draw, so they added marshmallows
to the mix. Now, the raccoons were placed in a
room with a cylinder of water with marshmallows floating on
the surface, and then stone scattered all around it. Now,
(17:55):
the catch, of course, was that the water level was
so low that the raccoons couldn't get to the marshmallows.
They actually have to displace the water with the stones
in order to be able to reach those marshmallows. So
the researchers demonstrated this move for the raccoon audience, and
then they waited to see if they would repeat this
behavior themselves. Now, in the end, two of the eight
(18:16):
raccoons successfully repeated the trick and claimed these marshmallows. Well,
the third raccoon decided to go her own way, so
she climbed on top of the cylinder, rocked it back
and forth until the whole thing tipped over, allowing her
to claim the marshmallow prize without lifting a single stone. Anyway,
given enough time, they all seemed to somehow get to
(18:37):
the marshmallows. Yeah, of course they do. I mean they
always get the marshmallows. But you know, I like that fact.
I like that you brought sticky treats into the mix,
that you've got raccoon ingenuity just highlighted there, and of
course as off the trifecta. So I think I've got
to give it to you this week. Thanks so much.
And if any of you out there have great facts
or stories about raccoons and Mamma, if you happen to
(18:58):
be listening Mega. I don't know if you've heard mam
pitched the podcast, but she tells people to listen and
she says it's like the radio on your phone, and
so it's a it's a good pitch. But if you've
got great facts, are great stories, we always love to
hear those from you hit us up on the socials,
but from Gabe, Tristan Mango and me. Thanks so much
for listening.
I guess what, Well, what's that Mango so gave? Are brilliant.
Brilliant researcher who basically powers the show was telling me
that when he moved out to l A, he lived
in this airstream trailer behind someone's house. This was as
he and his girlfriend were trying to figure out their
apartment hunter or whatever, and apparently these raccoons came by
one day and stole his girlfriend's shoes. But they were
(00:24):
just sitting outside. They came by, stole the shoes, and
then a few days after that the shoes were back
where she'd left them, except now they've been washed. They've
been so like the raccoons washed the shoes or what.
Apparently he said, this is a real thing. Like there's
this whole YouTube world of raccoon food washing videos where
the curtis just kind of like dunk their food and
(00:44):
water and then rinse it out before they eat it.
This is not real, it is. But here's the thing.
So raccoons aren't doing all that washing because they really
like clean food or they're super like sanitary. It's because
when they dunk their food, that's the way they learn
more about it. They've got these hairless front paws that
are extremely sensitive to touch, and according to the National
(01:06):
Geographic raccoons have four to five times more sensory cells
in their paws compared to most mammals, and of the
part of their brain that processes like sensory signals is
actually devoted solely to that sense of touch. And that
means they can like determine the weight, size, texture, temperature,
whatever with their paws, like just when it comes into
touch with something, that's awesome. But how does dunking food
(01:28):
and water help with this? Yeah, so that's the strangest part.
Water it's like a superpower. It increases their sense of
touch in the same way like sunlight might for our
sense of sight, Like you know when you wake up
in a dark room and step outside for the first time,
like suddenly you can see everything. And when a raccoon
dunks the grape or a pair of shoes or a
smartphone as they like to do on YouTube, into water,
(01:49):
it stimulates the nerve endings in their paws and as
a result, it opens up this whole new world to them.
And uh, it's called dousing, that's what it's called when
they dip stuff in water. But it's actually developed as
a way to help them locate food when fishing in
cold water streams. And while this is a super useful
trick to have, it's also you know, made them super
(02:10):
adorable eaters on YouTube's and YouTube celebrities. But that's just
the first of nine facts we've got about raccoons today.
Let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to part
(02:40):
Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined
by my good friend Man gueshow Ticketer and on the
other side of the soundproof glass wearing a welcome to
Pawnee shirt. That just made me smile to see this
and it's got a big picture of a raccoon on it. Now,
that's it's an impressive parks and rack reference from our
good friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Yeah. I mean, you're
not gonna see any Eagleton shirts with trash pandas on them.
(03:02):
But you know, well, how do you feel about raccoons, Like,
are you schemed out by them? Do you think they're cute?
What's your stance? Well, you know, when I was a kid,
I actually really liked raccoons because I would go over
to my grandmother's health. Actually, we've had Mamma on the
show before talking about how to live a healthy life
at the age of ninety one. But anyway, I'd go
over to her house and there was a raccoon that
(03:23):
we nicknamed Bandit, and we would feed bandit marshmallows. It's
probably a terrible idea and probably not good for them,
but we would put marshmallows out on a plate on
the back porch and Bandit would come up and eat them,
and we just we just watched. But then one time
I tried to walk out there while Bandit was eating
the marshmallows, and the scary face that it made at me,
and the noise, Like any I can't even recreate the noise.
(03:46):
It was pretty terrifying. So now, to be honest, I'm
a little bit scared of raccoons. Yeah, I'm a little
like I I feel the same way. I actually like
my first stuffed animal was a raccoon, so like, I
used to carry that around with me everywhere. I had
fondness for raccoon. But then, uh, once I learned a
little bit more about them, I've sort of maintained a
healthy distance from them. But it's curious, Well, what's your
(04:07):
first fact? Well, how about the fact that Toronto is
the self proclaimed raccoon capital of the world. That I
was in Toronto not too long ago, I had no
idea about this. I don't know how I missed this fact. Well,
I am intrigued. Go on, all right, Well, for years now,
the city has been grappling with a raccoon population boom,
unlike any scene before now. According to the Toronto Star,
(04:30):
the raccoon takeover began back in two thousand two. This
is when the city rolled out its organics bin program,
and that's where they separate compostable waste into you know,
these separate green bins. And as you'd imagine, local raccoons
were huge fans of this program because it required residents
to basically put all of these choice edible garbage items
(04:51):
into one easily tipable bin. And so pretty soon raccoons
were coming out of the woodwork and making new homes
for themselves in these neighborhoods and in people's backyards and
just kind of throughout the city. And this happened so
much so that last year the city estimated there are
now more than one hundred thousand raccoons living in Toronto.
(05:12):
I love that and that is crazy. It is well.
The infestation has become such a problem that in two
thousand and sixteen the city spent about twenty four million
dollars on this special new wastebind type that they were
putting everywhere, and it was specifically designed to keep out
the scavenging critters. Not to open one, you have to
turn a handle on the lid and unhinge this gravity lock,
(05:36):
and since raccoons don't have thumbs, the city hope that
raccoons wouldn't be able to work the handle. But as
we know from science experiments on the subject, there are
few locks on Earth that can't keep out a hungry raccoon,
and so this proved to be the case last year
when multiple videos were released showing these determined raccoons opening
the ben's lids and claiming all the garbage goodies inside there.
(05:59):
But now be fair. Out of nearly half a million bins,
only a couple dozen raccoon break ins have been reported,
and the band manufacturer does claim the break ins are
the result of faulty handles rather than the animals actually
mastering this lock system, but it doesn't seem like Toronto
will be giving up its title anytime soon. So on
(06:20):
that subject, here's the fact that might not surprise you.
Raccoons are excellent problem solvers. But the question is how
smart are raccoons exactly? And researchers have been trying to
figure this out for well over a century at this point,
but the conclusion is unanimous. If there's food involved, raccoons
are very smart. That makes sense well. One of the
earliest and most famous studies of raccoon intelligence was carried
(06:42):
out in the early d by this animal behavior scientists
named H. B. Davis, and he rounded up a dozen
wild raccoons and then presented them with a series of
puzzle boxes, each of which was baited with a piece
of food and and outfitted with a different kind of lock.
And so the task was for the raccoons to figure
out how to pick the lock, open the box retrieved
the snack. And while that, you know, might sound hard,
(07:03):
Davis actually made the task even tougher. So the raccoons
have to contend with a variety of lock types, including hooks, bolts, buttons, latches,
and levers I guess, and some boxes even had multiple locks,
like two buttons or a pushbar and a lift latch,
and so it gets pretty complicated. But despite Davis throwing
everything he could at them, in the end, the raccoons
(07:25):
could I guess, open eleven of the thirteen different complicated
lock types, and most of the animals mastered a few
of them in fewer than ten tries. So Davis suspended
the experiments for a few years, and then he returned
to the task and he found that the raccoons immediately
remembered how to operate the different locks like he started
testing this. He repeated the experiments several more times, and
(07:46):
he realized at the end of this that once they
solve a problem, they can remember exactly what that combination
is for like three years or more. That is unbelievable.
All right, Well, I know we talked about raccoons love
for washing things, especially Gabe's girlfriend's shoes. I mean that
seems like a great trick, right, Like you just leave
all your laundry out and hope the raccoon laundry service
(08:08):
returns it. Press unfolded, right, But I don't know how
the press then folded part, but it's uh, it's impressive
either way. But that's the interesting thing is that the
raccoons are actually named for their little hands. So the
word raccoon was derived from the Powhatton tribes name aurankan,
which means the animal that scratches with its hands. And
I'm certain that I mispronounced that, but I did find
(08:29):
that fact interesting, and it was one of them, right,
I said hands, thank you. I know how to say
hands now, But it was one of the first Palhatton
words ever recorded by English colonists at Jamestown. But they
weren't the only ones to notice the raccoon's pause, as
it's really it's defining feature. The ass tech name for
raccoons was actually a word that means the one who
takes everything in its hands. So weirdly, the raccoon's scientific
(08:53):
name also takes its cues from the animals dexterous pause.
It's called the price ion lodar, which is a Neo
Latin word and it translates to the before dog washer.
I guess because raccoons came around before dogs. But it
is funny that like everyone zoned in on that hands feature,
(09:14):
the pause feature, right, like, like I feel like I
I look at their cute mass or whatever their fuzzy tails.
So I'm gonna take this back to Calvin Coolidge, who,
as you might remember, had a pet raccoon when he
was president in the nineteen twenties. And that's a fact
I feel like we've all heard and remembered, but I
never knew how it came to be, And Gabe pulled
us up for me. So the first thing to know
(09:35):
is that Calvin and his wife Grace Coolidge were about
the biggest animal lovers ever to live in the White House, right,
and the whole country knew it. So the couple had
like this menagerie of animals on the grounds, including like
a goose, a donkey, a wallaby of all things. And
they have this collection of pets that the press called
the Pennsylvania Avenue Zoo, and Coolidge supporters were so eager
(09:58):
to like add to this presidential zoo that they would
just routinely sent him these unsolicited pets. So like he
got cats, dogs, and canaries, which are pretty standard things.
And then history dot com says he received a black
haired bear from Mexico and African pygmy hippopotamus from a
rubber bagnate, and even a pair of live line cubs,
(10:19):
which the fiscally conservative president gave the less than fuzzy
names Tax Reduction and Budget Bureau. Of course, the raccoon
was also a gift from this admirer, this woman from
Mississippi named Vinnie Joyce, except that Vinnie hadn't sent the
raccoon to be a pet. She actually intended the animal
to be slaughtered and served as an entree at that
(10:39):
year's Thanksgiving. But I guess at the time raccoon meat
was something of a delicacy, and in fact, the first
edition of Joy of Cooking has a recipe for raccoon.
But um so weird, I know. Thankfully for the raccoon, though,
President Coolidge did not share the country's taste for raccoon
and decided to grant the massed animal this pardon and
(10:59):
he kept as a pet instead. They named Rebecca. And
it's pretty funny, like they tried to keep her in
the house. She clawsed upholstery, she tears apart clothing, She
just generally runs the muck. But then the cool just
decided to build her this wooden treehouse outside on the
south lawn, and they were just obsessed with her. They'd
walk around on a collar and leaf. The caller said,
(11:20):
Rebecca Raccoon of the White House. On it. She even
participated in the Easter egg roll, though apparently that was
kind of the last raw because she um clawed at
children and and then kept running away from the White House,
so like the staffers had to keep chasing her down,
but they decided to donate her to the National Zoo,
where she lived happily and was heralded as the first
(11:41):
Raccoon of the White House. What a great story. All right, Well,
why don't we talk a little bit about raccoon masks,
because you were saying that that probably would have been
the defining feature that I would have thought about if
I was trying to give this creature a name. And
you know, raccoons have always been viewed as bandits in
popular culture, and that's partly for good reason, Like they
make off with whatever they can get their weird little
(12:02):
hands on. And let's be honest, those little black masks
they wear aren't helping matters, since it just makes them
look like these little furry outlaws. They may be cute,
but they definitely look like outlaws. Yeah, it's like in
that Secret Pizza Party, which, yeah, from the guys who
made dragons love tacos. But uh, you know, I I
love that book so much. Just how that raccoon like
dreams of stealing pizza and like has all these ideas
(12:25):
and and you know he finally does it because he
tricks people by thinking he has a mask on. Yeah. Well,
obviously they don't wear the eyemasks to be stealthy or stylish,
but you know, these markings actually help the raccoons, and
it helps them to see more clearly. So according to researchers,
the black fur kind of functions like you know, like
(12:46):
you would put grease pain or like black stickers that
athletes wear under their eyes during games, so that dark
color absorbs incoming lights so that the glare doesn't interfere
with their vision. And raccoons use this trick to see
better in the dark. Actually, so their mass cut down
on the peripheral light that might be out there in
the dark, and it makes it easier for them to
(13:06):
perceive contrast and and tell different objects apart from each other.
I had actually never heard this before. Yeah, that's really fascinating.
So here's a bit of a surprising research I found. So,
according to Suzanne McDonald, who is this psychology professor and
biologist at York University near Toronto, the raccoon capital of
the world. I guess uh, city raccoons tend to be
(13:28):
smarter than their country cousins. And in two thousand fourteen,
she outfitted city raccoons with GPS callers to see how
they handled themselves compared to country raccoons, and in one experiment,
she discovered that the city dwellers had learned to avoid
major intersections altogether. And in another test, she found that
most city raccoons were capable of opening trash can lids,
(13:48):
while the country raccoons would like they never quite figured
it out. In fact, they smell food at the bottom
and just like kind of powed it, but they never
understood how the lids system worked at all. And uh,
you know, it's it's funny because, like um, she she
was comparing the two, the city raccoons just went for
the lid every single time. But you know, I think
it's an interesting test. I do hope it doesn't lead
(14:10):
to like stereotyping of country raccoons, because I'm sure there
are some smart country raccoons out there and and they
have other talents that they're way better at. But uh,
it is a fun study. Yeah, that's pretty funny. Well,
I know we've got two more facts to go, but
before we get to those, let's take a quick break.
(14:42):
Welcome back to part time Genius where we're talking raccoons.
All right, mego, what is your last fact going to be?
How about we talk about Japan, which has been dealing
with an out of control of raccoon population for about
forty years now. So Toronto isn't the only cosmopolitan place
with this issue. And surprisingly, Jeff and his whole mess
can be traced back to this beloved children's cartoon, really
(15:05):
a cartoon. Yeah. In ninety seven, this animation company released
an anime adaptation of this memoir called Rascal Memoir of
a Better Era, And both the book and the animated
series are about this author, Sterling North, and this baby
raccoon named Rascal that he kept for a year as
a boy. And the anime cartoon series. It premiered in
(15:26):
January of that year in and then ran a new
episode each week for the entire year, and pretty much
the whole country was swept up in raccoon fever. So
families began importing these pet raccoons from North America so
their kids could re enact what they'd seen on screen,
and the trend became so popular that for years after
the cartoons released, more than fifteen hundred raccoons were brought
(15:49):
to Japanese shores each month, and as you can probably guess,
things got out of hand pretty quickly. So Japanese families
soon discovered that real raccoons aren't as loyal or cuddly
as you might see on TV. The real life versions
might trash your house, attack your kids, and and also
eat way way more than you think, so they aren't
(16:11):
great roommates. But when when the pet raccoons grew too
larger unruly, many families just released them into the wild,
and eventually the Japanese government got wise they banned the
important ownership of raccoons, but it was already far too late,
and today the descendants of that first wave of raccoons
have spread to forty two of the country's forty seven prefectures,
(16:31):
and they're believed to cause about three thousand dollars worth
of damage to food crops every year. Oh wow, so,
so what about the cartoon like, did it kind of
fade into obscurity after you know, people lost their love
for these raccoons or what. No, Rascal Raccoon is actually
still an icon there and he's this merchandizing powerhouse in Japan.
And of course the original series is still considered a classic.
(16:51):
And you know you get that right, Like, as awful
as they are, cartoon raccoons are still pretty cute. So definitely,
So what are you gonna with? All right, Well, how
about a little fact about marshmallows. You know I shared
the fact at the beginning there. So last year, a
team of scientists put eight raccoons through what is known
as the Asop's Fable test to see whether they could
(17:12):
recognize cause and effect. So you might be familiar with
the fable in question, and it's the one where a
thirsty crow can't access the water at the bottom of
a picture, so the bird cleverly drops pebbles into the
picture until the water level rises enough for the crow
to be able to take a drink. I vainly remember that.
I don't know what the moral of that story is,
I do remember that, So how's it related to the test.
(17:34):
We're not going to get into the morals of this today,
it's it's just way too deep for us, but well
for the raccoon version. Researchers knew that the water alone
wouldn't be a big enough draw, so they added marshmallows
to the mix. Now, the raccoons were placed in a
room with a cylinder of water with marshmallows floating on
the surface, and then stone scattered all around it. Now,
(17:55):
the catch, of course, was that the water level was
so low that the raccoons couldn't get to the marshmallows.
They actually have to displace the water with the stones
in order to be able to reach those marshmallows. So
the researchers demonstrated this move for the raccoon audience, and
then they waited to see if they would repeat this
behavior themselves. Now, in the end, two of the eight
(18:16):
raccoons successfully repeated the trick and claimed these marshmallows. Well,
the third raccoon decided to go her own way, so
she climbed on top of the cylinder, rocked it back
and forth until the whole thing tipped over, allowing her
to claim the marshmallow prize without lifting a single stone. Anyway,
given enough time, they all seemed to somehow get to
(18:37):
the marshmallows. Yeah, of course they do. I mean they
always get the marshmallows. But you know, I like that fact.
I like that you brought sticky treats into the mix,
that you've got raccoon ingenuity just highlighted there, and of
course as off the trifecta. So I think I've got
to give it to you this week. Thanks so much.
And if any of you out there have great facts
or stories about raccoons and Mamma, if you happen to
(18:58):
be listening Mega. I don't know if you've heard mam
pitched the podcast, but she tells people to listen and
she says it's like the radio on your phone, and
so it's a it's a good pitch. But if you've
got great facts, are great stories, we always love to
hear those from you hit us up on the socials,
but from Gabe, Tristan Mango and me. Thanks so much
for listening.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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