> While both rural and city racoons readily approached familiar containers, they dealt differently with unfamiliar ones. Where rural raccoons took a long time to approach novel containers, city raccoons would attack them the moment she turned her back.
I wonder if part of this could be due to differences between city and rural attitudes toward killing cute animals?
In cities, we tend to try to deal with a raccoon getting into our stuff by replacing the container with something harder for the raccoon to open, or moving it somewhere else. We try to stop the animal without harming it, even if this inconveniences us. If it is particularly troublesome, we try to trap it without harming it, and relocate it. It takes a lot to get us to go all the way to the kill it option.
In rural areas, we are much more likely to go straight from "there's a raccoon messing with my stuff" to "kill it".
I'm sure you didn't mean to, but that comment comes across as an easy stereotype that sees city-dwellers as respecters of nature and rural people as killers.
The other thing is, my own anecdotal experience contrasts with your own anecdotal experience. (For what that's worth, which isn't much, I admit.)
I've lived in big cities almost all my life and people around me have killed or otherwise sought to harm raccoons on numerous occasions. They're thought of as pest, and in cities, pests abound unless you do drastic things. I've heard raccoons killed outside my window, I've seen bunnies dead from being fed rat poison, etc. In big cities. There's the pests angle, but there's also a fear of animals that seems to be associated with a lack of familiarity with and experience around animals that rural settings are more conducive to having.
By contrast, the years I spent living in rural places I encountered much more sensible attitudes towards things like raccoons. I found that people who live somewhere that leaves one more aware of one's place in nature have more respect for it.
Of course, there were numerous exceptions to both dynamics. And again, just my experience, but I think the notion that city-dwellers are somehow friendlier to nature is a too-easy misconception that's fueled mostly by the us-vs.-them narrative that's being pushed on us by politicians and the media alike. Country-dwellers hate nature! City-dwellers love nature! It's just too easy, too lacking nuance.
And then there's the whole problem to get around of cities being the most subdued nature there is: pouring concrete and asphalt over a large piece of nature and then claiming some kind of moral authority is a difficult concept for me. Manhattan used to be populated by the Lenape...
I know that per-capita you could make a strong case that cities have lower impact per capita, but something about that just doesn't feel sufficient to me.
Right. If you transplanted a city raccoon to the country and it got shot the first time it started rattling someone's garbage can would you still classify it as more intelligent than rural raccoons?
I wonder if also equipping containers with dummy latches would help -- some mechanism with moving parts that messing with gives the sensation of making progress, but ultimately opens nothing. A honeypot handle, if you will.
When I see stray dogs in Mexico they always have a submissive demeanor and a facial expression that invariably evokes pity. I suppose being an aggressive stray dog is a one-way ticket out of the gene pool, so submissive/pity inducing dogs are naturally selected in an urban setting.
Torontonian Raccoons are resilient but for the most part try and stay out of sight/out of the way of humans. However, I can't let my dog out into our backyard at night in Toronto. I'm pretty much guaranteed a trip to the vet.
We got rid of our dog door because of raccoons. 3:00 in the morning, me dancing around in the backyard in my underwear trying to figure out how to seperate raccoon and dog, and wondering how in suburban Seattle to quietly finish off the half dead raccoon and/or dog when it's over.
I don't mean to play up the "pit bulls are tough" trope, but damn that's the only dog I've seen walk away from a 'coon with only a few scratches, no trip to the vet. It was the raccoon's lucky day, too, as he scampered off to tell his friends. I'm serious, that's what the raccoon did, because we haven't seen a raccoon in the neighborhood three years since.
There's a raccoon who destroys my veggie patch almost nightly. It doesn't matter how secure I make it, how much mesh/wire/etc I use to try to protect it.
The raccoon is smarter than I am. I'm considering moving.
[+] [-] tzs|11 years ago|reply
I wonder if part of this could be due to differences between city and rural attitudes toward killing cute animals?
In cities, we tend to try to deal with a raccoon getting into our stuff by replacing the container with something harder for the raccoon to open, or moving it somewhere else. We try to stop the animal without harming it, even if this inconveniences us. If it is particularly troublesome, we try to trap it without harming it, and relocate it. It takes a lot to get us to go all the way to the kill it option.
In rural areas, we are much more likely to go straight from "there's a raccoon messing with my stuff" to "kill it".
[+] [-] CONTRARlAN|11 years ago|reply
The other thing is, my own anecdotal experience contrasts with your own anecdotal experience. (For what that's worth, which isn't much, I admit.)
I've lived in big cities almost all my life and people around me have killed or otherwise sought to harm raccoons on numerous occasions. They're thought of as pest, and in cities, pests abound unless you do drastic things. I've heard raccoons killed outside my window, I've seen bunnies dead from being fed rat poison, etc. In big cities. There's the pests angle, but there's also a fear of animals that seems to be associated with a lack of familiarity with and experience around animals that rural settings are more conducive to having.
By contrast, the years I spent living in rural places I encountered much more sensible attitudes towards things like raccoons. I found that people who live somewhere that leaves one more aware of one's place in nature have more respect for it.
Of course, there were numerous exceptions to both dynamics. And again, just my experience, but I think the notion that city-dwellers are somehow friendlier to nature is a too-easy misconception that's fueled mostly by the us-vs.-them narrative that's being pushed on us by politicians and the media alike. Country-dwellers hate nature! City-dwellers love nature! It's just too easy, too lacking nuance.
And then there's the whole problem to get around of cities being the most subdued nature there is: pouring concrete and asphalt over a large piece of nature and then claiming some kind of moral authority is a difficult concept for me. Manhattan used to be populated by the Lenape...
I know that per-capita you could make a strong case that cities have lower impact per capita, but something about that just doesn't feel sufficient to me.
[+] [-] krupan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] breadbox|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duopixel|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksar|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikestew|11 years ago|reply
I don't mean to play up the "pit bulls are tough" trope, but damn that's the only dog I've seen walk away from a 'coon with only a few scratches, no trip to the vet. It was the raccoon's lucky day, too, as he scampered off to tell his friends. I'm serious, that's what the raccoon did, because we haven't seen a raccoon in the neighborhood three years since.
[+] [-] pauljarvis|11 years ago|reply
The raccoon is smarter than I am. I'm considering moving.
[+] [-] drussell|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CONTRARlAN|11 years ago|reply