'Trash pandas' shapeshift to live among humans

Raccoons living wild in cities in the United States are beginning to show physical changes that resemble early signs of domestication.

- Anna Betts NEW YORK

A recent study found that urban raccoons had developed shorter snouts than rural raccoons. It is a physical trait that appears across domesticated animals that have adapted to living in close proximity to humans. Other changes such as smaller teeth, curlier tails, smaller brains and floppier ears also appear over time.

"I wanted to know if living in a city environment would kickstart domestication processes in animals that are currently not domesticated," said the study's lead author, Dr Raffaela Lesch, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Lesch and her team analysed nearly 20,000 photos of raccoons uploaded from the US to iNaturalist, a community science platform. They concluded that, across the country, raccoons living "in close contact with densely populated human environments experience a reduction in snout length" and observed a "3.56% snout reduction between rural to urban raccoons".