raffaela-lesch.bsky.social
@raffaela-lesch.bsky.social
Reposted
Raccoons have easy access to food in the form of human trash. It could be jump-starting physical and behavioral changes in the masked bandits, new research suggests. https://cnn.it/4ac7cUq
November 24, 2025 at 11:01 PM
Reposted
New paper from my former PhD student Raffaela Lesch's lab used a citizen science database to show that urban racoons, who arerapidly becoming less afraid of humans, also have shorter snouts than wild-type rural racoons.
Link: rdcu.be/eRcpT
November 22, 2025 at 10:57 AM
Reposted
2025. Tracking domestication signals across populations of North American raccoons (Procyon lotor) via citizen science-driven image repositories frontiersinzoology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....
Tracking domestication signals across populations of North American raccoons (Procyon lotor) via citizen science-driven image repositories - Frontiers in Zoology
North American raccoons are widespread across the contiguous United States and live in close proximity to humans (i.e. urban) and in rural environments. This makes them an excellent species for comparative work on the effects of human environments on phenotypic traits. 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. These results are crucial for the discussion of the validity of the Neural Crest Domestication Syndrome hypothesis. They also offer new opportunities to potentially observe early-stage domestication patterns in a yet non-domesticated mammalian species, without the possibility of introgression or hybridization with other already domesticated mammals.
frontiersinzoology.biomedcentral.com
October 4, 2025 at 2:59 AM
Ever wondered which animal might be our next domesticated species? We might have the answer! We wanted to test whether urban environments kickstart patterns in line with the domestication syndrome. The domestication syndrome is the umbrella term for traits we commonly observe across domesticates.
October 6, 2025 at 5:07 PM
Reposted
New #RSOS paper: The domestication of the #wolf larynx—testing the neural crest connection: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
July 20, 2025 at 5:03 PM