Overview
- The peer-reviewed paper in Frontiers in Zoology reports urban raccoon snouts are about 3.56% shorter than those of rural animals.
- A University of Arkansas at Little Rock class helped analyze nearly 20,000 U.S. raccoon images from iNaturalist to compare snout-to-skull ratios.
- Authors frame the pattern as consistent with domestication syndrome and cite the neural crest hypothesis as a possible developmental link.
- The team plans genetic and hormone tests and is repeating the analysis in other urban mammals such as opossums and armadillos.
- Public-health context includes New York City's October oral rabies vaccination baiting to reduce risks at the human-raccoon interface.