These Tiny Endangered Raccoons Make Their Toys Out of Trash | CBC Radio

When Nessie O’Neill first saw a pygmy raccoon making a toy ball out of trash, she didn’t realize that she had just made an important scientific discovery.

“My first thought was, oh my god, this is amazing,” said O’Neill, a biologist at Miami University in Ohio. How it happens presenter Neil Koksal.

She then showed the footage to her consultant.

“She said, ‘Nessie, this is very important. Don’t post this on social media because we need to write an article about this.”

This paper now published in Wild magazinedocuments how tiny Mexican critters rummage through baskets for paper and other materials, turn the scraps into balls to play with, and teach their family members to do the same.

The authors say this is the first documented evidence of “material culture” – publicly available cultural information about objects – in Procyonids a family that includes raccoons, ringtails and other similar creatures.

“We know that raccoons are very playful animals. If you give them a cat toy, they will hit it, chew it and chase it,” O’Neill said. “But we haven’t seen anything like this until now.”

Pygmy raccoons are a critically endangered species found only on the island of Cozumel off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.

Weighing about three to four kilograms, they are much smaller than the stocky mainland raccoons that live in the cities of Canada and America. They have long limbs that they use to navigate their native mangrove forests and forage for crabs and other shore prey.

But as their natural habitat is increasingly destroyed by development, O’Neill says they have turned to tourist waste and trash cans for sustenance.

In fact, O’Neill was watching a family of raccoons at a beach club when she first witnessed them making toys.

“I actually saw one of the minors go into the trash can, dig around and pull out a rather long receipt. And she brought the receipt back into a stainless steel bowl of water that one of the employees had set out for her and started dunking it in the water,” she said.

“She started rolling it between her hands and forming it into a ball. And then she would roll it around in the sand and maybe throw it back into the water for a while, and then go back to the sand and work on shaping it. And after she got it the way she wanted, she started playing with it like a cat with a little mouse toy.”

WATCH | A dwarf raccoon makes a toy with his own hands:

Watch this pygmy raccoon make a toy ball out of trash

In Mexico, pygmy raccoons have been recorded snatching scraps of paper from trash cans and then using water and sand to form them into small balls to play with. Photo: Nessie O’Neill/University of Miami.

Then, O’Neill said, she shared her skills.

“Her sister learned this behavior too. She watched and trained with her,” O’Neill said.

The study notes that the mother raccoon also tried to roll the ball, but gave up when she couldn’t get the paper towel out of the water bowl.

“The mother’s success during this attempt may have been influenced by her having previously consumed a one-ounce margarita, which appeared to reduce her dexterity,” the study said.

New behavior

Benjamin Beck, a retired Smithsonian conservation biology scientist and co-author of the book. Animal tool behaviorsays he has seen many cases of animals playing using random objects as toys.

But he says he’s never heard of an animal making its own toy.

“I think it’s in its own category where you can say you created a toy for play and also used the toy for play,” he said. “What this difference means, I’m not entirely sure. Perhaps it involves a higher level of foresight and creativity.”

What’s even more interesting, he said, is that the raccoons were throwing the ball back and forth to each other.

“It’s a social object game,” he said. “And I have no record of this.”

However, he said he would be hesitant to call this behavior an example of culture, given the small sample size.

“You have to look at the succession of generations to make sure that the behavior persists, it is learned from generation to generation, before you can make the leap to any culture,” he said.

The Plight of the Pygmies

There are only 200 pygmy raccoons living in Cozumel today, and O’Neill says their numbers are dwindling as tourism development destroys their habitat and deprives them of their natural food source.

In fact, the pygmy raccoon that O’Neill first filmed making a paper ball has since died.

“She was so exhausted from eating almost nothing but tortilla chips,” she said.

O’Neill says he hopes the study will shed light on the plight of pygmy raccoons and inspire people to change their behavior, especially tourists.

“People should stop feeding them. Stop feeding them tortilla chips. Stop offering them margaritas. Stop supporting resorts and beach clubs that destroy their homes,” O’Neill said.

“Every animal has intrinsic value. Even if people can’t see it, they have a right to be there. This is their home.”