@benroyce

Not sure about that.

Dogs & cats were domesticated because they were useful in spite of limited edibility.

(Or to be accurate, historically, the resource cost of feeding an edible carnivore is impractically high, so if you intend to eat them, you usually do so when weaned.)

Various herbivores & birds have been domesticated because useful+edible.

Raccoons may be fun if you can deal with them, but afaik they're less keen on e.g. providing pest control services than even foxes.

...

@benroyce

And while they have historically been a source of furs, they didn't have to be domesticated for that.

There is no guarantee that the "pets" phenomenon will persist if humans have to return to subsistence rather than the (globally) wealthy few having the resources to devote to expensive fluffballs. They may still be tolerated but that's not domesticated.

Of course, they may learn to become useful, but I'm not sure how.

@electropict

absolutely spot on about cats and dogs (and horses, falcons, etc): usefulness

however we still keep pets "just because." parrots for example

and since we now have cats and dogs less for usefulness and more for companionship, the path for raccoons to become pets is viable in today's day and age

it's already a trend, there's tiktok videos about pet raccoons that are popular (a miserable trend, it's like living with crack addict):

https://ktla.com/news/raccoons-as-household-pets-becoming-more-popular-in-america-report/

@benroyce

Indeed; people keep spiders and even ants. Not to mention tigers and other more destructive creatures ... FENNECS.

But it's a habit of an affluent culture. In the long term (sufficient for real domestication) there's no guarantee affluence will persist. If you don't have water you can't keep an octopus, however impressively intelligent. If raccoons could have been domesticated (and sometimes eaten in hard times, like pet monkeys) in less affluent conditions, why weren't they?

@electropict

the slow evolutionary changes where domestication becomes easier are only happening now

nevermind that people already do keep raccoons as pets, and have so for a long time

judging by tiktok, it's becoming more popular (if not merely just trendy algorithmic bs, people like to watch pet raccoon videos)

this is probably the most famous pet raccoon:

rebecca, the white house raccoon, kept as a pet there by president calvin coolidge and his wife grace

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_(raccoon)