https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/urban-raccoons-are-showing-signs-of-early-domestication-with-shorter-snouts-than-their-rural-cousins-180987729/

Recent stories about signs of domestication in urban raccoons made me wonder why snout shortening is associated with domestication.

This article gives a brief account of one possible explanation, the neural crest domestication syndrome hypothesis, and links to a scholarly article on the topic.

#Raccoons #Domestication #NeuralCrestDomesticationSyndromeHypothesis #Wildlife #Symbiosis #Pets #DomesticAnimals

Urban Raccoons Are Showing Signs of Early Domestication, With Shorter Snouts Than Their Rural Cousins

The shorter faces of these city-dwelling trash bandits offer a telltale sign of domestication and line up with a leading hypothesis about animals that adapt to human-dominated environments, according to a new study

Smithsonian Magazine

Sammy wishes everyone a great weekend. Or… Maybe he’s just inviting me to join him for a game of ball? It’s hard to tell sometimes.

#Dog #Cute #Indoors #LapDog #Pet #DomesticAnimals

@hanscees @BenjaminHCCarr Sure rats lived close to humans, because of the availability of food there. But especially interesting are diseases that were exchanged between humans and their #domesticanimals. They did not only receive #diseases from these animals, but also transferred diseases to them, an example is scabies (die toite #Sarcoptes #scabiei) , which humans got over their #ancestryline.