The Role of Thumbs in Raccoon Behavior

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Raccoons are born to live near water, just bellied up to the river buffet. They use their non-hands to whip up dirt in crusted slug cakes. The next time you watch one up scond with half of your burrito, check it out. You'll see that it's prayer hand emojing your lunch instead of grilling it.

Tiny hands! Round rumps! Chaos! Compost! Delicious garbage and sweet faces make raccoons as mysterious as they are adored. World class raccoon expert, psychologist and animal behaviorist Dr. Suzanne MacDonald of Toronto’s York University explains tree sleeping, brain worms, cartoon raccoons, queer icons, whether you should keep one as a pet and also: some of the best career and life advice from midnight gremlins eating chicken bones in your driveway. Stay tuned for next week’s part 2 with half a dozen more raccoon experts.

Follow Dr. Suzanne MacDonald on Twitter

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A donation was made to Toronto Wildlife Centre

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Sound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray Morris

Transcripts by Emily White of The Wordary