Thank you! 😁

Haha 😂 I can envision the raccoon dangling from the ceiling fan, while the cat is throwing books from the shelf, and the dog is chewing on a shoe. Good times are coming! 😂

This study is published in Frontiers in Zoology with a large group of student authors from the @ualittlerock.bsky.social

The link to the study is here: rdcu.be/eJHRk

Not only do urban raccoons have shorter snouts than rural ones, but the snout length also is dependent on climate! Colder climate have overall longer snouts than warm climates. So: maybe in a few thousand years we don’t just have dog beds and cat trees, but also raccoon trees/beds in our homes!

We used raccoons to test our hypothesis that life in proximity to humans with the availability of easy food ie trash would impact the snout length of these animals. According to our predictions urban raccoons would have to have shorter snouts - which is supported by our data!

Slight deficiencies in these cells would have the ability to explain all the traits we so commonly see in domesticates. We now wanted to test if environments mimicking those of early dog and cat domestication: close proximity to humans and the availability of trash would kickstart domestication.

Curly tails, floppy ears, white patches, and shorter snouts are all fairly common traits. It is likely that living in close proximity to humans has put animals under selection pressures for tame behaviors, which in turn had a trickle down effect on neural crest cells in early embryonic development.