{"id":3648,"date":"2026-10-04T20:24:46","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T19:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/raccoons-teach-each-other-to-make-toys-from-paper-and-sand\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T20:24:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T19:24:47","slug":"raccoons-teach-each-other-to-make-toys-from-paper-and-sand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/raccoons-teach-each-other-to-make-toys-from-paper-and-sand\/","title":{"rendered":"Raccoons Teach Each Other to Make Toys from Paper and Sand"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><\/figure>\n<p><strong>On a small Mexican island, researchers witnessed a fascinating animal behavior: tiny raccoons teaching each other how to fashion balls from discarded trash.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Crafty as a pygmy raccoon<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Situated off the coast of the Yucat\u00e1n Peninsula in the Caribbean Sea, Cozumel is renowned for its unique wildlife. Recently, Nessie O\u2019Neil from the University of Miami and colleagues traveled there to document precisely the impact of tourism on the pygmy raccoons (<em>Procyon pygmaeus<\/em>), endemic to the island and regarded as critically endangered.<\/p>\n<section class=\"incontent-related\"><span class=\"incontent-related__title\">Read also<\/span> <span class=\"incontent-related__desc\">In Alaska, Fat Bear Week invites netizens to vote for the fattest bear before its winter hibernation<\/span><\/section>\n<p>The team filmed one of the youngest individuals removing a piece of paper from a trash can, dunking it in a bowl of water, then rolling it in the sand to fashion a makeshift ball. In the days that followed, the same ritual was documented in other <em>P. pygmaeus<\/em>, who then participated in unlikely rounds of \u201c<em>animal football<\/em>\u201d with dwarf coatis (<em>Nasua narica nelsoni<\/em>), small mammals closely related to them.<\/p>\n<p>As the study notes, published in the journal <em>Wild<\/em>, brothers and sisters were teaching each other this crafting technique and even tried in vain to involve their mother, whose coordination appeared to have been altered earlier in the day by consuming a margarita remnant found on the beach.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>Some animals, like tigers and chimpanzees, are known for being highly playful, but species that fashion toys for later use are much rarer<\/em>,\u201d notes Michelle Szydlowski, also from the University of Miami. \u201c<em>Raccoons are highly tactile creatures, effectively seeing with their hands<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<section class=\"incontent-related\"><span class=\"incontent-related__title\">Read also<\/span> <span class=\"incontent-related__desc\">The song of this familiar garden bird soothes the human ear more than any other, according to science<\/span><\/section>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"cssc-content-video-wrapper\"><iframe title=\"Pygmy raccoons make toys out of paper\" width=\"680\" height=\"383\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/bu0TfYq5J2E?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Implications for the conservation of P. pygmaeus<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Today there are fewer than 200 pygmy raccoons on Cozumel. Gaining a better understanding of their behaviors proves essential for the species\u2019 conservation, which, like Gibraltar\u2019s macaques, now appears to be abandoning its historical food sources in favor of meals left by tourists.<\/p>\n<p>For Marek \u0160pinka of the Czech Institute of Animal Science, such discoveries illustrate how complex animal play can be. \u201c<em>It will be fascinating to see whether this spreads within the island\u2019s P. pygmaeus population or disappears<\/em>,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier, researchers had photographed for the first time the Cozumel dwarf fox, regarded as one of the rarest canids in the world.<\/p>\n<section class=\"incontent-related\"><span class=\"incontent-related__title\">Read also<\/span> <span class=\"incontent-related__desc\">Warrior, this warhorse hero who survived the hell of the trenches<\/span><\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":432,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2462,514,980,2461,1898],"class_list":["post-3648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-paper","tag-raccoons","tag-sand","tag-teach","tag-toys","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3648"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3649,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3648\/revisions\/3649"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}