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Clarkives

Canadian columnist invokes century-old study on raccoon intelligence

October 5, 2015

Raccoon in tree

 

Clark University has tentacles everywhere, and this year they touched the great trash removal debate in Region of Peel, Ontario (surely you heard about it).

A Feb.17 column in the Caledon Enterprise addressed the region’s $46 million plan to collect garbage in oversized bins as part of the new biweekly waste-collection schedule. Then there’s this: homeowners would be supplied with green bins that were reported to have undergone rigorous testing and judged to be “raccoon-proof.”

Columnist Tayler Parnaby wasn’t having it, and invoked a 100-year-old study by Clark University graduate student Herbert Burnham Davis, published in the American Journal of Psychology, to make his point. Davis conducted a series of studies on raccoons, “discovering the vast majority of his beasties could unlock a baited box within 10 tries and then remember how it had been done. Davis concluded raccoons had the learning ability of primates, the monkey in particular.”

Raccoon-proof bins? No such thing. Or, as Parnaby put it: “I suspect the raccoons are licking their chops.”

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