12 January 2026

In Case You Missed It (ICYMI), this study made a splash in November/December:

A new study from the Univ of Arkansas finds that raccoons living in urban areas are physically changing in response to life around humans—an early step in domestication.

The study lays out the case that the domestication process is often wrongly thought of as initiated by humans—with people capturing and selectively breeding wild animals. But the study authors claim that the process begins much earlier, when animals become habituated to human environments.

— Scientific American, 14 Nov 2025: Raccoons are showing early signs of Domestication

Did you know that domesticated mammals have physical traits that set them apart from their wild cousins? “Domestication syndrome” includes whiter or brown patched fur, floppy ears, shorter muzzles, smaller teeth. The image below is a partial table of those traits. (Click the image for a larger version. Click on the image caption to see the complete table.)

Raccoons are not listed in the table but they are making physical strides on their own and might be domesticated some day. At the University of Arkansas researchers viewed thousands of raccoon photos from iNaturalist and found …

We use raccoons as a mammalian model system to test whether exposure to human environments triggers a trait of the domestication syndrome. Our data suggests that urban environments produce reductions in snout length, which are consistent with the domestication syndrome phenotype

— (boldface added) Tracking domestication signals across populations of North American raccoons (Procyon lotor) via citizen science-driven image repositories

Shorter snouts!

CP24 in Toronto — where there are so many raccoons that the animal is an unofficial mascot — interviews the study’s author in this video.

For more information, see this article in Scientific American and the original Univ of Arkansas study paper at Spring Nature Link.

8 January 2025

Imagine a society in which all the mothers become pregnant around the same time and, when it’s time to give birth, they all gather in a large room and give birth on the same night. It’s dark, there are lots and lots of babies. All the women help each other and help the babies. Soon no one is sure which baby is her own biological child but it doesn’t matter because all the mothers raise the young together. In the shuffle each mother finds a baby she wants to cuddle and care for and that child, regardless of whether it’s the one she birthed, is the one she will escort into adulthood.

That’s a pretty good description of banded mongoose (Mungos mungo) society.

Because of their birthing strategy banded mongoose moms are confused about biological kinship. Does this lead to a fairer society? Do the best equipped mothers cuddle the pups who need the most care?

In 2021 scientists from the University of Exeter and the University of Roehampton decided to find out. In their paper at Nature Communications: A veil of ignorance can promote fairness in a mammal society, they wrote (paraphrased), “In his 1971 book A Theory of Justice, American philosopher John Rawls argued that fairness in human societies can be achieved if decisions about the distribution of societal rewards are made “from behind a veil of ignorance” which obscures the personal gains that result.

Working with seven groups of mongooses in Uganda, they manipulated the birth weights of pups by giving some, but not all, of the pregnant mongooses extra food. After giving birth, the well-fed mothers doted on the smaller pups born to the underfed mongooses by feeding, carrying, protecting, and grooming them more often than their own, larger pups. “

We predicted that a ‘veil of ignorance’ would cause females to focus their care on the pups most in need” rather than their own offspring, Exeter evolutionary biologist Michael Cant said in a press release. In doing so, he adds, mongoose mothers minimize the risk that their future offspring could one day face a disadvantage—while evening [leveling] the playing field for the whole colony.

— Science Magazine, June 2021: Mongoose mothers help their colonies thrive—by forgetting which pups are theirs

Confuse mongoose moms about kinship and you get a fair society.

p.s. Banded mongooses are closely related to meerkats. This one poses like a meerkat.

And here’s where banded mongooses live.

2 January 2026

December was snowier than expected and the New Year started with a line storm of blowing heavy snow that quickly ripped across Pennsylvania in the wee hours of New Years Day.

Snowfall always makes travel difficult, except perhaps for river otters who move faster than usual by sliding in the snow. Their tracks look odd until you know what they’re doing.

Run, slide, run, slide.

This technique was especially useful when two otters escaped a zoo last winter. Here’s a description of the video that follows.

Mar 26, 2025, Two river otters, Louie and Ophelia, weaseled their way out of their Wisconsin zoo enclosure last week during a winter storm, appearing on security camera footage cavorting across the snow, as the search continued Tuesday. The NEW Zoo & Adventure Park said the two North American river otters escaped through a small hole that they enlarged in a buried fence, and their flight was quickly noticed by zookeepers on their morning rounds. (Video provided by NEW Zoo & Adventure Park via Associated Press)

— Otters slip through snow as they escape Wisconsin zoo

River otter rapid transit!

22 December 2025

When I wrote Where the Rabbits Are in Winter several of you mentioned jumping rabbits. I looked for videos and found this!

An AZ (Arizona) Desert Critters trail cam captured the antics of two desert cottontails.

Why do cottontail rabbits do this?

• In courtship: When a male is courting a female he rushes at her and she jumps straight up. If he’s really interested in her he’ll spray urine. You have to be a female cottontail to appreciate this.
• For dominance: Rabbits are territorial about food so when two cottontails of the same sex want the same territory, they chase each other.

Fun Fact:

Cottontails are rarely found foraging for food on windy days, because the wind interferes with their hearing capabilities. Hearing incoming predators before they get close enough to attack is their primary defense mechanism.

— Wikipedia: Cottontail Rabbit

And that’s how a great horned owl sneaks up on them on silent wings.

12 December 2025

The eastern cottontail population in my city neighborhood comes and goes. In some years we have so many rabbits in late summer that they scuttle in front of us during the day. In other years we rarely see one. Their ebb and flow is directly related to the presence of red-tailed hawks and owls who eat them, and to the time of year. We see lots of rabbits in late summer when the young disperse and few in winter.

So where do rabbits go in winter?

A Squirrel Hill friend of mine found out. She usually doesn’t see rabbits in her yard but one showed up in late October to shelter under the ninebark bush outside her window (photo below). For several weeks he visited every 3 or 4 days. He probably he had other daytime protected spots around the neighborhood. 

But this week, she writes, “Now that all the leaves are down the landscaping crews have been removing every bit of downed litter.  Many, but not all, the yards are cleaner than my carpets.  The cottontail has been under my tree for 5 days running.” (photo at top)

As winter progresses suitable cover becomes increasingly scarce everywhere, in the wild and in backyards. Vermont Fish and Wildlife explains (paraphrased):

Winter is the most difficult time of year for rabbits.

In Vermont, snow cover limits the distribution and densities of the cottontail population. Because they are poorly camouflaged in snow, winter cover needs are acute for cottontails. They depend on low growing woody vegetation for food as well as for escape and thermal cover.

Cottontails will select areas of better cover over areas with abundant food if both are not found together. Rabbits have two different cover requirements: feeding cover and resting/escape cover. Dense vegetation can provide adequate summer cover, but in order for the rabbit to survive the Vermont winters, dense woody vegetation(*) such as that found in old fields is critical.

Eastern cottontails are active day and night year-round. They spend their days resting on “form,” or small, scratched out depressions in clumps of grass or under brush piles. During the night or during periods of heavy snow, cottontails may use underground dens of woodchucks as temporary shelter.

— Vermont Fish and Wildlife: Eastern Cottontail

Fifteen years ago, in December 2010, I wondered where rabbits went in the winter so I asked readers to comment on this article and tell me what they’d seen.

I’ve summarized their 39 comments below:

• When rabbits shelter in backyards they may be under bushes, under a low deck, in woodchuck holes, or even in those large black ribbed plastic coils used for runoff.
• Rabbits favor backyards with bird feeders because they eat the fallen seeds at night. They’ll also eat handouts such as carrots.
• Some rabbits appear at dusk, others prefer late night forays after 10pm.
• When there’s snow cover people figure out where the rabbits are by looking for their tracks. Hawks and owls do the same. I swear some rabbits are smart about this and walk on the snowless patches so you can’t track them.
• Rabbits’ natural winter food is woody stems which they eat as far up as they can reach. If you have rabbits you will have to protect shrubs and young trees; rabbits girdle them.
• If you have a dog that likes to chase rabbits, you will know exactly where those rabbits are!

On the subject of dogs, my favorite comment in the December 2010 blog was from Anne Curtis:

There’s at least one rabbit that is out off Beeler St. at about 11:30 pm in my front yard, because that’s the last time I take our dog out for the night, and it torments her by standing there, saying “I’m a statue and you can’t see me!” but of course she can from the contrast! No bunny tracks in the back, but lots of (feral) cat tracks. Hmmm? A connection?

— Comment from Anne Curtis, 27 Dec 2010

(*) Ninebark is dense woody vegetation, thus favored by the rabbit.