![]() ![]() The baculum is used for copulation and varies in size and shape by species. They like cities almost as much as we do.įor better or worse, we have unwittingly hooked up with raccoons for the long run.The word baculum meant "stick" or "staff" in Latin and originated from Greek: βάκλον, baklon "stick". The crux of the issue is that raccoons are a lot like people: clever, opportunistic, adaptable, and fiendishly persistent. Figure out which streets are too busy to cross safely (which they seem to be able to do pretty quickly), locate your local garbage can, and you’re living the raccoon high life. And for hyper-adaptable animals like the raccoon, the city is a safe haven, with no hunting or trapping and no predators. People are more tolerant of wildlife than they used to be, seeing the presence of wild animals as a life-enhancing glimpse of nature rather than as a menace. Cities are getting greener, providing habitat. What’s clear, he told me, is that people and wild animals are coming into contact more and more frequently. Gehrt is not totally sold on the idea that cities make raccoons smarter, saying that much more research needs to be done. Except the raccoons seem to figure them out as soon as they’re created. Characteristically, the Germans have tried to solve the problem through engineering, creating ingenious shields to keep raccoons from climbing up drainpipes and into houses. In Germany, raccoons were imported for hunting and fur, and there’s a thriving population in German cities like Kassel, where there are today about 100 raccoons per square kilometer (0.39 square mile). She looks like it has made her pretty sad. In Japan, they’re just killing them: A biologist interviewed on the Nature program estimates she’s done away with 10,000 of the beasts. ![]() Removing food sources, trapping and relocating the raccoons, and sealing up any available hole where they can enter are the best strategies, but they don’t always work. And guess what? To quote the honey badger, raccoon don’t care. People try all sorts of things to get rid of raccoons: rags soaked in ammonia, mothballs, cayenne pepper, coyote piss, strobe lights, ultrasonic noise machines, you name it. Owners dumped them once they grew up and got vicious, and as a result Japan is filled with raccoons that are basically turning some of the country’s most historic buildings into toothpicks by nesting in them. #Raccoon toothpicks tv#The Nature show included segments on how the furry critters are destroying centuries-old Buddhist temples in Japan, where they were introduced after a ’70s TV show called “Rascal the Raccoon” convinced people that they would make cute pets. The episode provoked a small rally, complete with pro- and anti-raccoon camps. One homeowner got so fed up with the raccoon family that was destroying his garden that he attacked them with a shovel - and got arrested for animal cruelty. There are concerns not just about property damage, but also about the spread of diseases such as rabies and raccoon roundworm. In Toronto, which according to Nature is “the raccoon capital of the world,” the animals are causing lots of problems. People are actually feeding them and adopting them.” “People have a different kind of relationship with raccoons,” says Stanley Gehrt, associate professor at Ohio State University, one of the raccoon researchers featured in the Nature show. To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist. ![]()
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