🎬 CUTTING ROOM FLOOR: Urban Raccoons Are Showing Signs Of Domestication! (Podcast Exclusive)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
My Heart podcasts here, more gold one on one point
seven podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Playlists and listen live on the free iHeart app. It's
time a man of cutting rum.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Everybody, it's time for a man gott.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
It's the cuttin room on the cutting room floor today.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Do we have raccoons in Australia.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
No, I don't think we do.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
What's our equivalent of possum?

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, it'd say to be a possum.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Well, this is an interesting story about raccoons in the States.
Then a new study from the University of Arkansas Little Rock.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
That's we got the Clinton that time of Baba well,
yes and missus Bubba Missus Bubba missus Clinton President and
Secretary of State, all of that.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
But they found that urban raccoons have snouts that are
three point five percent shorter than rural ones. And what
this means is that this is signs of early domestication.
Research suggests that living around humans and relying on human trash,
this favors raccoons that are karma that are more tolerant

(01:23):
traits associated with tameness. So this also may relate to
neural crest domestification. Barbers with science words, sorry, what happens
is that. And I was talking you through what happened
with dogs when they were domesticated. The muzzles are shorter,
which is what we are seeing in these city raccoons right.
So when the animals, when dogs were domesticated, this is

(01:45):
the same thing that happened when they went from wolves
to being dogs. There were skull and facial changes, shorter
snouts because dogs wanted. If a dog is a lap dog,
and those dogs like Pickanese and things that are bred
to sit on your lap, they've been bred to have
much shorter snouts and big eyes so that they can
sit on your lap and look you in the face.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
And you see more of more of them getting pushed
around in prams. Now, yeah, do you do you think
like saying one hundred years time or more would be
like a thousand years top. Well, these dogs being capable
of walking, now.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
They're being pushed around in prams because they're elderly dogs.
Dogs And I learn this from Chris Brown. Dogs like
to be high up, and so if you want your
dog to have an outing but it's too old to walk,
you put it in a pram. I have new sympathy
for that. Now I've got an older dog, but also
dogs like mine. She's a Border Collie. She's got a
bit of a longer snout. German shepherds. All those dogs
that have long snouts. When you talk to them and

(02:36):
say do you want to go for a walkers at
time for dinner, they will move their head from side
to side when they look at you because they are
trying to look around their own snout to read your
facial expressions. So dogs that are bred to be lap
dogs sit on your lap and are much and read
that much more easily. So Animals that have shorter snouts
are more cuddly cozy. So these animals also are having

(03:00):
a smaller body sized. Wolves were big. We forget how
big they were. Dogs became smaller. Their ears dropped. Floppy
ears is a sign of friendliness. A lot of this
stuff was changes that made them friendlier, cuter, and more
puppy like. That's what we've bred into these dogs that
started as wolves. Because they are less aggressive, they are cuter.

(03:24):
And one of the things too, is they canal their guts,
can handle human food and cooked foods rather just tearing
around meat in the wild, so they are less aggressive.
Their faces are less aggressive, their teeth are smaller, and
now they're starting to see all of that in raccoons.
Would you have a pet.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
Raccoon, Well, they're not here, but I follow some life.
I probably have well over a possum. Yeah, I got
possums everywhere around here. But I follow a whole.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Lot of sights on social media sites of people who
animals walk in and they're injured and they look after them.
A lot of people do look after injured or orphaned
raccoons and end up sort of sitting at the table
with them and eating out of the fruit ball and
part of the family.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, when I was in Western Australia, there was a
family up there. They'd always look after injured kangaroos. Little
kangaroos and they grow in a big musclies. Well then yeah,
they and they can rip you a part of you.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Well, let's talk about Michael Jackson's chimp. People who buy
little chimps have a lot of trouble when they reach adolescents,
and Bubbles had to be shipped off somewhere.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah. Well, Bubbles was going to parties with Michael Jackson.
Was he remember that? You were telling me that we
went to the parties and Apparently he held court.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Apparently he was far more social than Michael was. People
wanted to talk to Bubbles rather than Michaels.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Because Michael's hurling the feces round God. Liz Taylor right
in the mush, you can see it. More on the
White Gloves, Okay today, Come back to more for more.
Georgie Hammond