From primatologist Frans de Waal’s public Facebook page, via reader Malcolm:
Bandits!
January 21, 2014 • 8:38 am
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Wonderful!
Love it!
Such an amazing, beautiful, and smart animal. And often pointlessly vilified and hunted for fun.
Nice shot!
I have raccoons that do the same thing. Once they get the nerve to come out and make sure our dog is safely inside they rush onto our property and steal food out of the dog bowl.
How adorable! I love raccoon.
awwwwwwwww
Wow, how did ring-tailed lemurs get in the sewer?
Just kidding. 🙂
They’re cute, smart, etc, and I had one in captivity (I don’t want to say as a pet) in college for a semester or so that I caught as a youngster and enjoyed until he escaped. But raccoons in daylight is I think generally not a good sign.
Make that broad daylight.
Once they mature, they suddenly get wiled. Perhaps your racoon left at that time – they get quite growly & bitey at that point.
Major lol! A rack of coons ready for a game of billiards.
Amusing, but to my eyes it looks very much like a photoshop job. The racoons’ heads have no depth, they look flat, as if someone stuck a cutout of their heads there. Also, their heads seem very small, unnaturally so. Just my opinion.
That’s the first thing that struck me as well. Nowadays it’s very difficult to determine if strange photos (and some not-so-strange photos) are real.
Upon careful observation and study of that picture, it becomes absolutely obvious that it is a fake. The space between the head of the raccoon on the right and the one in the middle is light and not dark enough, and the line of the edge of the hollow is clear from the right hand to the head of the raccoon on the right, but is non existent to its left and between/above the other two heads.
It looks like a print of the raccoons with the top end of that print slightly tilted. I don’t quite know how to explain it, but it is clear to me.
Raccoons often visit sewers and drainages and there are lots of photos of them in sewers on the web…why would someone fake this? There heads are small likely because those are related kits.
Certainly folks will fake just about anything, but this particular instance seems unlikely to me.
I, too, think it is legit.
I reckon that is because you are not very observant, especially of details.
Obnoxious comment noted.
Nothing obnoxious about a statement of fact.
I am used to analyzing photos and am very observant. The points I raised are valid and confirm that this picture has been doctored, however often raccoons hang out in drains.
“I don’t quite know how to explain it, but it is clear to me” may work for you. But you’ll forgive us for not simply accepting an appeal to authority.
Don’t blame me for having sharper eyes than you and for having a sharper observation capacity than you.
I don’t blame you for anything other than having an arrogant attitude. When someone disagrees with you it does not mean that they are any less observant of details than you are. Your comment was obnoxious.
Okay, stop this bickering NOW! It’s useless to settle this issue in this way, and I don’t like readers sniping at each other.
I love that they usually live among us with complete anonymity, but our fleeting glimpses of them are like looking directly back into the wild.
They are precious and they are precious reminders that we move and shake the earth, but they figure how our labyrinths work.
At #s 3 and 4 above, two readers are obviously channelling the recent Hili-hunting / bird-disappearing coincidence :
Someone has to show Jerry this. He’ll love it. It’s an entire website with cats about to sneeze lolol
http://imgur.com/gallery/PZglF
The first one looks the funniest – it’s such a human expression. Made me feel like sneezing!
That is excellent. I have one, too… the seventh is the series of pictures if you click on my gravitar.
…IN the series
Oh! Wise guys, eh? Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!