Could raccoons become the new dogs?

They're undeniably cute, but they'd also be a pretty annoying pet. Last fall, a study of raccoons found that these city-dwelling trash pandas are beginning to look different than their rural cousins in the U.S.—they appear to be domesticating themselves. It wouldn’t be the first time a wild animal species manipulated humanity for its own benefit. Dogs did it at least 14,000 years ago, discovering that befriending garbage-producing humans resulted in tastier, more abundant scraps and less arduous lives on their own. New genetic data indicates that cats feeding off the abundant rodents plundering human food stores domesticated themselves for...