Researchers studying one of the world's rarest carnivores have documented what they say is the first evidence of "material culture" in the raccoon family: two sister pygmy raccoons on the Mexican island of Cozumel were observed pulling paper trash from bins, soaking it, and rolling it into play balls, then teaching the trick to their mother.
The behavior was first seen in January, when a young female raccoon retrieved a discarded receipt from a beach-club waste bin, dunked it repeatedly in a water bowl, and rolled it between her paws and against the sand until it compacted into a rough sphere. She then batted and chased the ball as a toy. Her sister later reproduced the technique using a hamburger wrapper, and the pair went on to play what researchers described as a kind of soccer with the balls; across 14 documented attempts, eight produced a finished ball, a success rate of just over 57 percent.
Published findings
The study, led by Nessie O'Neil and Michelle Szydlowski of Miami University in Ohio with Cozumel municipal ecologist Noel Anselmo Rivas-Camo, was published August 25 in the journal Wild. The authors say it may be the first documented case of any member of the Procyonidae family, raccoons, coatis and ringtails, deliberately transforming an object and passing that skill to other individuals for play rather than foraging.
"It was, 'Look how cute! She's making a ball!'" O'Neil told Scientific American of the first sighting, while Szydlowski noted that raccoons are highly tactile animals that "see with their hands."
Fewer than 200 mature pygmy raccoons are believed to survive on Cozumel, a roughly 480-square-kilometer island off Mexico's Yucatan coast, making the species critically endangered. The pioneering raccoon died not long after the discovery, from causes researchers linked to malnutrition and pollution tied to nearby resort development, but her sister has kept making balls, carrying the behavior forward in a population researchers are racing to understand before it disappears.
