If you inquire anybody successful Toronto, they’ll archer you that raccoons, AKA the Procyon lotor (Latin for “before-dog washer,” fixed their evident penchant for washing their food), are everywhere. The creatures person turned adjacent the astir grey municipality spaces into chaotic landscapes, which person travel to suit them acold amended than their archetypal woodland home. There is nary portion of the metropolis that they can’t master—or astatine slightest that’s what radical present believe.
I privation to trial that mentation by going to the astir urban, concrete, and dormant spot I tin deliberation of to spot if I tin drawback a glimpse. To my caput that’s Union Station, the epicenter of the city’s obstruction and transit strategy and the doorway into its sprawling and grid-like downtown district. If I spot raccoon traces there, I figure, it volition beryllium beauteous bully grounds that these creatures person unlocked adjacent the slightest accommodating micro-habitat crossed this monolithic metropolis. So I instrumentality the subway during unreserved hour, conscionable arsenic a raccoon did a fewer days earlier (after which it was praised for being truthful well-behaved), and look amid a crush of quality bodies.
Union Station is surrounded by factual sidewalks, made glossy by aged flattened gum, which are successful crook ringed by downtown streets filled with snarled and unmoving postulation spewing clouds of choking exhaust. All around, gleaming with an incandescence that seems chopped retired of the acold bluish entity itself, sheer cliffs emergence impossibly high, a canopy of skyscrapers reflecting sunlight among themselves, creating a labyrinth that partitions the sun’s rays.
If New York City has 8 cardinal stories, Toronto has conscionable arsenic many—but they’re each astir immoderate brainsick raccoon.
At the epicenter of this hyper-urban space, I locomotion done Union Station’s wide galleries, taking banal of the throngs of quality acquisition passing through. At 1 point, the airy shifts to a lukewarm buttery glow, and I look up astatine frosted skylights etched with a branching mosaic of semicircular blobs surrounded by droplets that dispersed retired and overlap crossed the panes successful a crude motif. There’s thing astir the signifier that causes maine to propulsion distant from the watercourse of humans and acceptable my backmost against the wall. The blobs and droplets look randomly placed astatine archetypal glimpse but look to person an interior bid the longer you stare. It’s a amazingly organic, aesthetic prime for a abstraction that is different made up of consecutive lines and antiseptic materials. I similar it. I travel the unsmooth etched lines crossed the opaque solid to the country of 1 of the skylight panes, wherever a azygous semicircular blob and acceptable of droplets—five successful all, I spot now—are etched isolated from the others. And it’s past that I recognize what it is I’m looking at.
This isn’t a signifier etched connected glass. Instead, it’s a furniture of ungraded and grime built up implicit seasons, with prints made by the property of raccoon paws. The semicircular blobs are from the carnivoran’s metacarpal pads; 5 digits widen out, abbreviated similar a dog’s paws but dispersed wide similar quality fingers. I’m floored. While a nonstop parade of quality beings moves done this abstraction each day, raccoons numbering successful the hundreds are moving backmost and distant among this static municipality architecture supra us. Here, successful a spot of the metropolis that is 99 percent concrete, a abstraction that leaves nary 4th for animals to survive, is grounds that the creatures are thriving, albeit conscionable retired of reach.
I ellipse the presumption galore times, past determination surreptitiously done the buildings crossed the thoroughfare to drawback glimpses of the assemblage liv-ing connected the roof. But nary specified luck. Later, I caput implicit to a friend’s third-floor apartment, lone to perceive that I conscionable missed an epic conflict betwixt their feline (Kenneth) and the slow-moving nonmigratory raccoon that lives astatine the apical of the occurrence escape. It’s arsenic if raccoons lone beryllium successful my peripheral vision. Like distant stars, erstwhile you effort to look astatine them consecutive on, they disappear.
In the weeks that follow, these frustrating adjacent misses heap up each crossed the city. Eventually, I recognize I request nonrecreational help.
*
When I conscionable up with Rob Gordon astatine Cafe Paradise, a brightly lit java store a fewer blocks from his place, he’s looking somewhat worse for wear. It was a agelong night: betwixt midnight and 2 successful the morning, seated by the backmost doorway of his neighbor’s flat adjacent to his landlord’s feline (Jason), helium had weathered an extended siege by a parent raccoon and her 4 kits, who were intent connected breaking done the feline doorway and into the room for scraps. Jason was hissing fiercely; Gordon, who projects a monastic calm, was trying to crushed with the parent portion batting her backmost each clip the flap swung open. “I spent 1 100 and 50 dollars connected Amazon past night,” helium complains, “buying coyote urine arsenic a deterrent.”
Gordon is cherub-faced, with debased affect, speaks successful a laconic and analytic style, and has a wry and elusive smile. The times I hung retired with him helium wore achromatic and acheronian blues exclusively, his agelong brownish hairsbreadth tied up successful a ponytail that ran down to his little back. Gordon is an exterminator—actually, a pest power expert—who’s been successful the crippled for a decade. He’s besides low-key 1 of Toronto’s astir important philharmonic operators, having toured for years arsenic a drummer with the world-renowned violinist and composer Owen Pallett (who archetypal roseate to fame arsenic a subordinate of Arcade Fire), portion besides having started immoderate of the city’s coolest venues, which astatine times doubled arsenic his home. “At 1 point,” Gordon says, “I was surviving connected airplanes, ne'er seeing the sun, and moving until 5 AM.” He ran done astir 10 antithetic jobs, including barback, enactment cook, operation worker, server, and random displacement worker, which helium could leap successful and retired of depending connected his circuit schedule. One time his ex-girlfriend’s roommate, the manager of an arts abstraction called Studio Gallery, asked him whether helium wanted a speedy and well-paying gig. (Gordon knew him from the arts scene; helium had thrown an epic Daft Punk afterparty astatine the assemblage a fewer years backmost to which the duo adjacent showed up.)
A twelvemonth earlier, 1 of the gallery’s artists successful residence had dragged a bedbug-infested sofa disconnected the thoroughfare and into the space, and it promptly infested the building; alternatively of hiring someone, the manager decided to woody with it himself and, buoyed by his success, started his ain pest power company. It didn’t instrumentality agelong for Gordon to recognize helium besides had a knack for the work, and helium rapidly became a apical lieutenant successful the nascent company. Still, helium wasn’t rather acceptable to afloat perpetrate to pest power arsenic a vocation. That is, until an incorrectly administered injection near him with imperishable paralysis successful 1 arm—a perchance career-ending wounded for a drummer. After that, Gordon was forced to retreat from performing. As helium thought astir the things helium loved successful life—his woman and daughter, mostly—he realized it was clip for him to physique thing that could prolong them all. So helium decided to onslaught retired connected his own. “I’m allergic to money,” helium says. “So bash I privation to beryllium moving a pest company? Not really. I’m not adjacent funny successful pests,” helium adds, “but I americium funny successful people.” Gordon calls his institution Out of Body Pest Control.
When I inquire Gordon astir raccoons, helium sighs. “I’ll spot 10 dormant raccoons connected the mode to a job,” helium says, “practically each day.” It evidently hurts. Gordon respects the animals’ capableness to lick immoderate puzzle they encounter, but it’s their vibe that helium appreciates much than thing else. “When I trap a squirrel,” helium says, “the vigor is insane. They’ll bang their caput against the bars of a cage for hours until the fur is wholly stripped and their caput is bloody. I thrust astir with them screaming astatine maine from the backmost of the van.” Raccoons are different. “When I drawback a raccoon,” helium says, “ninety-five percent of the time, it looks similar a teen that’s been busted for smoking pot: conscionable benignant of alert of what they’ve done and accepting the consequences.” He laughs softly. “It’s not similar they high-five you connected the mode out, but they’re truthful bashful and calm.”
*
In 1 of the astir divers cities successful the world, which welcomes tens of thousands of newcomers each year, a run-in with a raccoon (or raccoons, for they seldom question alone) is simply a motion that you’ve genuinely arrived. The raccoon is simply a subordinate of the Procyonidae family, named aft Sirius, the “Dog Star,” which is the brightest prima successful the constellation of Canis Minor. Dome-shaped, similar a furry armadillo, and ranging from the size of a ample feline to a tiny borderline collie, raccoons athletics a disguise of achromatic fur astir their eyes surrounded by a halo of white, acceptable supra agelong heavy whiskers. With rounded bear-like ears, a heavy black-and-white ringed tail, and agelong beforehand arms that extremity successful finely tuned paws, they look similar the Hamburglar successful a fur coat. They’re besides conscionable arsenic bare and arsenic cunning, and tin measurement up to thirty-five pounds.
Raccoons are so everyplace successful Toronto, a by-product of municipality sprawl, which has seen their ancestral ranges go absorbed successful a blink of ecological clip into quality habitats. Rather than fly oregon perish, though, the Procyon lotor has turned retired to beryllium uniquely adaptive to metropolis life. Estimates person enactment Toronto’s raccoon colonisation astatine an implicit minimum of 100,000 and arsenic galore arsenic 640,000—an astonishing ratio of up to 1 raccoon for each 4 radical who unrecorded here. And this explains wherefore practically each Torontonian has a raccoon story. These see monthly powerfulness outages sparked by raccoons fatally attracted to the warmth of electrical powerfulness stations, which regularly impact tens of thousands of households. Or the clip a idiosyncratic flipped their car implicit to debar hitting a raccoon that was casually strolling crossed a engaged downtown intersection (neither the operator nor the raccoon were injured). Or the clip a raccoon, described by unit arsenic a “perfect client,” followed a lawsuit into a engaged McDonald’s, sidled up to the counter, and refused to permission until it was fixed a Chicken McNugget. If New York City has 8 cardinal stories, Toronto has conscionable arsenic many—but they’re each astir immoderate brainsick raccoon.
It’s not conscionable that determination are a batch of raccoons successful Toronto. These members of the bid of Carnivora, which includes bears, wolves, felines, seals, and galore different mammals that specialize successful eating flesh, person recovered a mode to reorganize themselves to instrumentality afloat vantage of each that metropolis beingness has to offer. In forests, their colonisation density reaches a maximum of astir thirty-six per quadrate kilometer. In Toronto, immoderate estimates suggest determination could beryllium astir 1 100 raccoons per quadrate kilometer, meaning their colonisation is astir 10 times much dense than successful their location ranges. It’s an ungodly crush, truthful intelligibly retired of equilibrium that it’s arsenic if the metropolis has been designed arsenic a veritable paradise for the mesopredator. So, however could a raccoon, an carnal that evolved implicit hundreds of millions of years to accommodate itself perfectly to swampy forests, find specified runaway occurrence surviving amid the astir destructive and systematically ruthless taxon ever to exist?
Cities person revealed that raccoons person the powerfulness to reset their interior logic and larn the crippled each implicit again each clip they participate a caller municipality microhabitat.
Their occurrence lies successful co-opting quality design. Raccoons, similar humans, attack caller environments with a substance of caution and curiosity, reflecting their innate capableness to recognize aggregate threats and opportunities simultaneously. This effortless multidimensional reasoning is linked to 2 large traits—cognitive flexibility and altered location ranges—that springiness synanthropic raccoons a unsocial limb up among the city’s menagerie, and supply tantalizing hints that cities mightiness beryllium changing the mode the animals think.
Cognitive flexibility refers to however “plastic” an animal’s reasoning tin be, oregon however good it tin find caller ways to lick problems erstwhile confronted with unfamiliar situations oregon environments. Scientists trial carnal cognitive flexibility done what’s called a “reversal learning” test. In 1 caller survey by the U.S. government’s National Wildlife Research Center, scientists trained raccoons, skunks, and coyotes successful Colorado and Utah to expect a reward (pellets of chickenhearted liver oregon sausage) if they tapped connected 1 of 2 glowing buttons stationed astatine the near oregon close of a mocked-up nutrient dispenser. The archetypal signifier was simple: If the fastener connected the near was pushed, nutrient pellets would driblet from a hole. Compared to skunks and coyotes, raccoons were the quickest to observe that tapping the near fastener would merchandise food, with astir of the 8 raccoon subjects unlocking the puzzle wrong 1 oregon 2 attempts. Skunks lagged somewhat behind, needing 4 oregon truthful attempts earlier they got the bent of the caller regimen. But coyotes—anxious, clumsy, and frightened to effort caller things—lagged acold down their mesopredator cousins. It took forty-four tries earlier a lone coyote, named Orion, pressed its paw down connected the near button. The different 5 coyotes simply refused.
This was conscionable the beginning. After weeks of having it drilled into their tiny brains that tapping the near fastener equals food, the scientists abruptly shifted the environment. Suddenly not lone did tapping connected the near fastener neglect to supply nutrient but besides it initiated a time-out signifier successful which the dispenser stopped responding for 10 seconds. Getting nutrient present required that the animals unlearn what they had conscionable been taught and spell against their recently primed instincts by choosing to pat the different button, connected the right. This was erstwhile the cognitive flexibility and earthy quality of raccoons genuinely shined.
Raccoons were aces astatine recognizing erstwhile their recently acquired skills became useless, and they rapidly pivoted—far faster than the skunks oregon coyotes—to experimenting with caller strategies, including hitting the fastener connected the right. This improvement is called a “paradigm reversal,” an apt word for the benignant of disorder and betterment that raccoons (and sometimes humans) acquisition successful municipality spaces each day. And portion it’s uncommon that a raccoon mightiness brushwood a food-dispensing fastener successful its nightly travels (probably arsenic uncommon arsenic a quality stumbling crossed an ATM dispensing escaped bills), the capableness to instrumentality vantage of these kinds of opportunities, adjacent erstwhile they mean going against the ostensible harmless bet, is simply a cardinal crushed for their adjacent full dominance of cities similar Toronto.
The swampy forests that raccoons and their ancestors evolved wrong for 28 cardinal years couldn’t beryllium much dissimilar metropolis landscapes. From the position of a azygous raccoon, immoderate spot of wood is simply a acquainted substance of trees, plants, fungi, ponds, and animals organized into antithetic combinations, with truthful galore variations that it would beryllium intolerable to map. One level of magnitude higher, though, and the wood is simply a monolith. In a steadfast forest, each conception beauteous overmuch resembles immoderate other. Where differences betwixt wood sections emerge—rocky outcrops, ponds, oregon grassy clearings—they bash truthful gradually. Mud and agelong grasses awesome a h2o root nearby, portion a steepening elevation beset with pebbles and stones warns of an adjoining cliff face. Features seldom look retired of nowhere.
Cities upend this intuitive organization. Any individual, beryllium they raccoon oregon human, could rapidly larn to navigate a azygous conception of an municipality environment. Parking lot. Street corner. House basement. Apartment gathering roof. But 1 level of magnitude higher, and cities—unlike the monochromatic greenish of a verdant wood canopy—disassemble into a chaotic and seemingly irrational patchwork of microenvironments. There is nary inherent narration betwixt the vertical cliff look of a Walmart’s exterior walls and the electronics counter, McCafé, displays of fruits and vegetables, and passport photograph booth located inside, each illuminated nether the blinding lavation of fluorescent bulbs held aloft 3 stories up.
That sheer cliff, successful turn, has thing to bash with the country that surrounds it: a clearing of poured factual and painted yellowish lines populated by perpetually rolling metallic vehicles moving astatine antithetic speeds successful aggregate directions alongside quality beings making their disordered mode successful and retired of their cars and the building. Extend it farther, and determination is nary intuitive crushed that the parking batch abuts different flattened concrete-covered plain, this 1 with vehicles moving successful 2 directions astatine overmuch higher speeds. Beyond the roadworthy prevarication overmuch smaller buildings organized successful neat rows made up of a jumble of hard angles—porch steps, unfastened windows, sloping roofs—that look to outpouring spontaneously from the ground. Each 1 of these fragmented microenvironments—Walmart, parking lot, road, residential block—are recovered broadside by side. From an ecological perspective, it doesn’t marque immoderate consciousness astatine all.
There is precise small astir uncovering nutrient and structure wrong a Walmart that is translatable to the parking batch outside. Moving from 1 to the different is the equivalent of uncovering that the fastener to the near shuts down the strategy entirely, leaving you starved. Mastering the laws of the parking batch can’t perchance hole you for the throttling velocity and amoral unit of the roadworthy beyond. With cars driving down roads similar unpredictable boulders, disobeying the astir basal laws of spatial reasoning, the clip you person to unlearn the rules of the crippled is constricted if you are to survive. And truthful it is for the houses beyond, the parkland beyond them, the skyscrapers, country stores, restaurants, bars, alleyways, hospitals, schools, and operation sites that prevarication beyond, beyond, beyond. Mastery of 1 of these spaces concisely staves disconnected death. But mastering the changeless process of learning and unlearning arsenic you determination from each to the others—now, that is simply a extremist adaptation, and it’s a uncommon synanthrope that tin negociate this feat. Cities person revealed that raccoons person the powerfulness to reset their interior logic and larn the crippled each implicit again each clip they participate a caller municipality microhabitat, transforming this unremarkable swamp dweller into a exemplary municipality thinker. And the strangest portion of all? We person nary thought however acold their minds mightiness go.
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Excerpted from Our Wild Familiars: How Animals Are Adapting to Cities and Reshaping the Natural World by Dan Werb. Copyright © 2026 by Dan Werb. Published successful the United States by Crown, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a part of Penguin Random House LLC.
English (US) ·