Researchers at the University of British Columbia want help from Vancouver residents as they study the smarts of one of the city’s most notorious critters — the “trash panda.”
The university’s Urban Wildlife Project is in search of backyards where it can set up humane traps, microchip the raccoons under sedation, then place a variety of puzzles in the yard for them to solve.
Researchers will record the raccoons’ responses on camera as they respond — or don’t respond — to five tests designed to assess memory, learning, self-control, and other critical skills.
“They are surprisingly very under-studied, but one thing we do know is that they’re super — what we call behaviourally flexible,” said Hannah Griebling, a doctoral student at UBC’s faculty of forestry.
“What our research is hoping to figure out is, get a better understanding of their behavior and their cognitive ability, or their intelligence, and how that can help us promote coexistence with raccoons and other urban wildlife in the future.”
A primary goal of Griebling and Sarah Benson-Amram, assistant professor in the faculties of science and forestry, is to determine the “domain-general cognition” of raccoons, or their ability to perform well on a test, having already performed well on another.
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One test they plan to plant in the yards will assess spatial memory with smart feeders that recognize a raccoon’s microchip. If the raccoon finds the food and returns for more, the feeder will offer a reward.
A skill called “reversal learning” can then be tested through a change in which a smart feeder rewards the raccoon and observations of how quickly the animal learns to go to the new feeder.
A different test will examine “inhibitory control” by seeing whether raccoons will learn not to reach for food stashed behind a transparent barrier as they attempt to problem-solve.
“We always want to make sure that the questions that we’re asking them are sort of ecologically relevant,” Griebling said.
“There’s sort of that old saying that you wouldn’t judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, so we are asking them questions … they would be helpful for them in foraging or finding a mate or surviving in an urban environment.”
The UBC team is seeking between 20 and 25 volunteers for their backyard experiment, and a few hundred participants for an online survey about observed raccoon behaviour.
Griebling said she recognizes raccoons are often a nuisance, but they’re also a “vital part of the environment.
“They do a great job of helping us dispose of our garbage. They also kind of eat everything, so they’ll eat insects and pests, other pests, species as well,” she told Global News.
“I think it’s really important to get a better understanding of some of these behaviours that we might not necessarily like that are just natural behaviors for the raccoons, and in that way, we can really learn a better way to coexist with the animals.”
To volunteer your yard for the study, email urban.wildlife@ubc.ca.
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