My main point was that it’s probably easier to start domestication with animals which can get not only get tamed (like elefants), but are even in the wild accustomed to live and interact with humans. Though, as I just remembered, that applies to foxes, too: Plenty of those live in metropolitan environments and quite a few have let themselves getting tamed.
Still, I think racoons would be an obvious example as candidates for domestication, if we set our minds to it. But why would we want something even more mischievous than cats in our homes. At least cats don’t come with thumbs.
Trying to keep a raccoon as a pet is, in general, a pretty horrible idea. At best, you can get them used to being fed by humans, which not only discourages them from hunting in the wild but also can lead to behavior that will most likely get them killed.
Uhm. Your arguments would be valid about feeding wild raccoons, or other animals. However, actually taking one in as a pet – committing to feeding it and to keeping it around you – negates those objections; it no longer has to hunt and its behavior won’t get it killed if it’s on your property. Might not be a bad idea to put a very visible collar on it to signal its status to other humans, though, so they know its behavior is from acclimation rather than disease and that someone will be upset if they kill it… and so they can contact you if it’s being a nuisance.
(Compare to cats, or to free-roaming dogs in areas which still permit that. Though, admittedly, people expect many cats to be pets and most will cut them a bit more slack.)
Ever read Born Free? Lions aren’t really tameable either, though it’s easier since they’re pack animals and as long as you’re the alpha they have no problem deferring to you. Of course Elsa the lioness could have challenged Joy for alpha status at any time. Or could have forgotten her strength and done serious damage in a moment of pique. Joy chose to run that risk. The same judgement call is made by folks managing performing animals, including dangerous ones. By comparison, a raccoon is a minor nuisance.
I agree that it isn’t something to go into with your eyes shut and denying the realities. Yes, it’s a wild animal and has to be treated as one. But that’s between the human and the raccoon, and there’s going to be individual personality variations on both sides. As long as the human has reasonable expectations and is willing to work with that, I think it’s up to him to decide whether that constitutes an acceptable relationship – with the understanding, as with any pet, that he has undertaken a responsibility and can’t just abandon the critter if he runs into difficulties later.
Hard doesn’t always mean can’t-be-done or shouldn’t-be-done. Again, the question is how the relationship was formed.
Heck, there are people who don’t know how to be alphas with their dogs; a lot of what obedience schools deal with is actually training the humans to occupy that role.
I do think forbidding it, in general, makes sense because most folks DON’T have a clue that this isn’t just a differently-shaped dog or cat. But “reality is fractal” and I have no problem with specific exceptions when they clearly aren’t hurting either the human, the animal, or anyone/anything else.
I’m lawful good, but judgement is always called for.
If I understand my state’s process correctly. The raccoon will not be returned. If she can be released into the wild, she will be. If she can’t, she will be sent to a “permitted rehabilitator” which will try to prepare her for eventual release. If the rehabilitator determines that she will never be able to be released, then she will either stay at the rehabilitation facility permanently or be turned over to someone with a special educational license to be used in a classroom or other teaching facility.
I think the nearest facility to where this guy lives is an organization called Walden’s Puddle.
If this is indeed a response to the video going viral, it may be an attempt to prevent what happened with the importation of pet racoons to Japan for pets in the 70s. hundreds of raccoons were imported in a pet craze following a popular cartoon (and probably the historical significance of the raccoon-dog, tanuki), but the poor beasts were soon to be found to be fairly unsuitable for taming and living with, so they had a variety of unsavory fates. There was eventually a ban on the import. One guy living in the woods with his chubby buddy is one thing, but when it sets off copycats who aren’t up to the specific challenge of a genetically undomesticated pet, there is reason for caution.
Except plenty of people have pet raccoons. As a little research will show. If by “not tamable,” you mean “will chew up everything in your house,” than yes.
Thanks, that was the point that I wanted to make. This particular raccoon and this particular man may be OK with each other (at least for the duration of a YouTube video), but hard cases make for bad law.
Truth. I was seven, she was a year old and we took her to a nice farm in Clinton when she got to be snappish. (And no, I don’t think she was really killed or anything…I got to set her free.)
Back in the Sixties, people were a bit more lenient on stuff like that. Also, considering her family was a nice, middle-class den of suburban 'Coons, having her “not knowing how to hunt” wasn’t an issue…she merrily ate crawdads from the stream, handouts and tipped over the occasional garbage can, just like her family. And, considering we didn’t have coyotes, wolves, or painters (Felis concolori) in the area anyway, there just wasn’t anything to dodge.
