Life is hard for everyone. Everyone has their “go-to thing" for mediating the struggles of life. Whether it’s going to the gym for hours a day, escaping in TV, movies, art, or even partying, drugs/alcohol there’s some form of coping with the everyday stressors of life.

Then are those who also have emotional support animals, officially and unofficially. If you have a pet, you unofficially have an emotional support animal- which is fantastic! However, we need to broaden our definition of what having a “pet” entails.

There have been many studies that illustrate raccoons are as intelligent as other animals, such as cats and dogs (and honestly probably more intelligent than most humans these days as well).

In 1907, psychologist Lawrence W. Cole, who had established a colony of raccoons at the University of Oklahoma, and Herbert Burnham Davis, a doctoral student at Clark University, each published the results of nearly identical experiments on the processes of learning, association and memory in raccoons. They relied on E.L. Thorndike’s puzzle-box methodology, which involved placing animals in wooden crates from which the animal had to escape by opening the latch or sequence of latches. They observed the number of trials required for successful completion and the extent to which the animal retained the ability to solve the same problem more quickly when confronted again with it. Using this method, they sought what Davis called “a tolerable basis” for ranking the intelligence of raccoons on the phylogenetic scale of evolutionary development. They independently concluded that raccoons bested the abilities of cats and dogs, most closely approximating the mental attributes of monkey (Pettit 2010). **This is a quote from the American Psychological Association, an association that is also responsible for licensing clinicians such as psychologists. In other words, an extremely reliable source and not a random blog post created by an inane person.**

So, why does legalization of having a pet raccoon matter? In California and various other states, if the government finds out that an individual is housing a raccoon i.e. they will send animal control to MURDER the raccoon. This is beyond cruel, and imagine being KILLED just because you’re “illegal.” This needs to STOP. How is that we’ve “advanced so much in civilization,” but continue to proceed with these barbaric acts of cruelty?

Here are some opposing arguments and counterarguments:

1. "But they have rabies!" Have you heard of this thing called A VACCINE? You must have this word in your vocabulary by now, as the entire world has received one (that being the COVID-19 vaccine of course). Studies have illustrated that raccoons are not simply "infested" with rabies or "born" with rabies or other potential diseases harmful to humans. They can receive a vaccine that would neutralize any potential danger or "threat" that would pose to humans. For instance, cats and dogs, among other animals receive shots to ensure the health of the animal and safety of the human. Why can't raccoons be apart of this practice as well?

2. "Raccoons are rodents, not pets." No they are not. Rodent is a scientific classification (rodentia), and raccoons are mammals (AZ Animals 2022). Please learn how to use google.

APA STYLE REFERENCES:

AZ Animals (2022). Raccoon. Retrieved from: https://a-z-animals.com/animals/raccoon/

Pettit, M. (2010). Raccoon intelligence at the borderlands of science. American Psychological Association. (41)10. Retrieved from: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/11/raccoon