Inspired by the poop thread.
How intelligent are raccoons? They seem curious. They have little hands with which they’re very dextrous. But most of the dead things I see in the road are raccoons. They don’t seem to learn from the mistakes of others of their kind.
Raccoons are generally solitary animals; you may see them in groups at your garbage cans, but that’s because that’s where the food is. So in order for them to learn about cars, they’d have to observe other raccoons being smooshed. But if they’re solitary, how they gonna do that? Along the lines of “If a tree falls in the forest…”, if a raccoon is hit by a car, but no other raccoon observes it, does it count as an object lesson?
Around here, squirrels are the most numerous roadkill, followed by cats, then possums.
So I don’t think that “number of dead raccoons observed as roadkill” really counts as a data point in the debate about raccoon intelligence.
I can tell you this: My friend Sandy was coming back from somewhere through Berkeley with a tall stack of pies on the back of his bike. He was accosted by a group of large adult male raccoons. They knocked his bike over, & mugged him for half of the pies. True story.
At least they left him half. 
I myself once saw a female raccoon climb up out of the sewer, pursued by three males. Right in front of the porch where I stood, she stood up on her hind legs, and snarled ferociously. The males actually backed off. My friend whose porch it was told me that she had a litter of babies under the porch.
Don’t forget, frequent-roadkill status might involve things like poor vision (or poor day-vision), the distractions of mating season, desperation because of hunger or pursuit or babies, etc. After all, humans are quite intelligent, but are often killed by cars too, sadly. Often through no fault of their own.
I’ve heard it said that we would have made it to the moon years earlier if we could just have convinced raccoons that there were garbage cans up there. They would have figured out how to get there and we could just follow them.
Who knows how smart any animal really is? But raccoons have great problem solving skills, and they definitely learn. They cooperate and organize to some degree to get food; it’s pretty amazing to watch.
They also can get cans stuck on their heads and wander around bumping into things for 20 minutes. So, maybe they’re not too smart.
I’ve always wondered why so many are roadkill, too, ESPECIALLY when I believe them to be really smart! I actually have lots of fun stories about raccoons and have a love and fondness for them.
One set of grandparents had a cottage on a lake in northern Wisconsin. Raccoons were nightly visitors. We had names for them and they would come to our door every night around 8:00pm looking for treats, namely marshmallows. There were several families and it was not uncommon to have 15-20 racoons, mostly moms and their babies eating marshmallows. Sunshine, our first and favorite raccoon, would sit back on her bum and reach up with her delicate an dexterous hands to grab a marshmallow off a stick. She taught five or six generations of babies to do the same. There were so many other stories as well. It was my “Little House in the Woods” life. 
On the other side of my family (northern Missouri), my other grandpa was a hunter and owned a couple of hound dogs. Grandpa always told me he never let the dogs get too far away from him because a raccoon on the run will lead a dog to water, lure him in, and jump on his head to push it under water and drown him. I don’t know if that is true or not, but he believed it and never lied to me, so I have no reason to doubt it.
I’ve come to believe that I am one of very small group of admirers of raccoons. I never underestimate the damage they can do, the cuteness they provide, and the wit they use to navigate their lives. The roadkill thing? I think it is because they are simply nocturnal and highly active. I also believe in the survival of the fittest, so I chalk it up to “they weren’t one of the bright ones”. :rolleyes:
For whatever reason, ten years ago, I believed raccoons were not good to have around. I saw a raccoon near the trash, so I got an ice cube and threw it at the guy, hoping to miss but startle it away. I missed and the ice cube broke up on the ground right under his nose. He didn’t even budge. He then picked up the ice cube bits and enjoyed them as a tasty snack. So much for the deterrent.
They’re not smart enough to make coats and hats out of our fur.
It could be that raccoons are so clever and prolific that you see more dead ones on the road, but that represents a tiny percentage of the ones that survive. They’re crazy clever at getting into garbage, I’ve heard…Telemark seems to have hit this one on the head. Maybe we should be convincing the raccoons that there are garbage cans on Mars, with nearby puddles they can wash the food in?
I hate raccoons. In the few encounters I’ve had with them, there’s nothing cuddly and/or cute about them. Looking one in the eye, I know they’re wild animals for sure. They just creep the hell out of me.
IIRC mice are quite smart in that poison mfrs have had to resort to a time-released formula. That is, if a mouse sees his buddy eat something and die, he won’t eat it.
Dave Barry. Here is a recently reposted column with some raccoon-oriented comments; the one where he makes that comment does not appear to be available online at present. But IIRC correctly, the line is something like, “If we ever get serious, as a species, about getting to Mars, what we need to do is somehow convince the raccoons that campers have hidden food there. They will find a way.”
Raccoons, like bears, are sociable animals, but not social ones. That is, when it suits them they can get along, but they don’t need companionship or pack membership.
I’d put raccoons at about the same intelligence level as the American Black Bear; that is, roughly the same level as the gorilla or chimpanzee. They are, as previously noted, wild animals and not well suited to domestication, and wily as hell when it comes to foraging for food.
Stranger
They’re more street smart than book smart.
I once had to pick up a juvenile handraised raccoon that had been in a house fire and hold it overnight until it could be transferred to a friend’s wildlife sanctuary. The raccoon had some congestion but was otherwise fine. I had a very bad cold at the time. Our breathing sounded the same.
They gave me the 'coon in a cardboard carrier - bad idea - he got out of that after a few minutes and was running around in the car with me. Then when I got him to my house I had to try to get him back in the box to carry him inside. I let him run loose in the enclosed porch while I set up his cage which was in a small room adjacent to our garage. I was still living at home at the time and my mother had some unfired ceramic items on the porch. The little monkey went around sticking his hands up inside every ceramic object to see if there was anything inside.
I moved him to his cage which he managed to escape out of at some point and get into the garage, in the rafters. I managed to find him by his breathing. So I was up on a ladder while feverish and coughing and wheezing trying to catch a young, active wheezing raccoon. I don’t know how but I managed to catch him. I was very happy to send him off with his new keeper later that day.
So he was an active, clever little bugger that managed to outsmart me a few times. That may not be saying much about their intelligence but that’s my raccoon story.
I hand raised an infant raccoon from about the age of four days old to adulthood. They are VERY intelligent, in a similar way to primates. Niko could solve simple problems, follow about 35 simple and 10 complex commands, had a large vocabulary of food related words, and would invent new “games” to keep himself amused. They are also OCD about their routines.
For example, raccoons have extremely sensitive, dexterous little paws. We supplied him with several baskets full of interesting textured items that he could play with. Every morning without fail he would insist on dragging a little basket full of smooth river pebbles over to the door and filled my left boot up with them. Niko would then cry for breakfast, and pull on my shorts with both teeth and paws until he got his bottle, and later his food. After brekkers it was back to the boot to remove the pebbles and put them back in the basket. He used his litterbox fastidiously and would not take a bath unless he had his purple rubber duck.
If you happen to be retired, or work from home and do not have children, they can make a wonderful and interactive pet if you are able to accommodate yourself to the needs of an undomesticated animal. For everyone else, remember that they also can bite hard, claw like the devil, and climb like apes; so don’t feed them unless you want them to come back every night demanding food.
In the book “Little Heathens” a memoir of growing up on a farm during the great depression, the author talks about her pet Raccoons. The young ones were friendly and stayed around, but they had one older one that was still mostly wild and was tied to a tree. If it didn’t like it’s dinner, it would leave the plate and climb onto a branch above the plate, then wait for one of the chickens to try to eat. At which point it would drop on the chicken, kill and eat it.
So the answer is, smarter than a chicken.
We’ll return to “Mutual of Omaha’s Urban Kingdom” after this message from Payday Loans.
Say what you will about raccoons’ intelligence - they still can’t outrun my V-8 Ford.
Neither can you.
Fifteen (now sixteen) responses, yet not a single post by a raccoon. Their intelligence is over estimated.
They just lurk.
Stranger
Or maybe some of the posters ARE raccoons posing as people. :smack: The Devil doesn’t always walk up and introduce himself.
My family and friends have standing orders to immediately terminate any raccoon they see using tools. We don’t need the competition.
On the internet, no one knows you’re a raccoon.