I'm Flor Lichten, and you're listening to Science Friday.

First, there was Pizza Rat, then Central Park's celebrity coyote, and finally I give to you

drunk raccoon.

A now infamous raccoon.

Video obtained by NBC News shows the critter inside a Virginia liquor store.

A trashed panda splayed out next to a trash can and toilet like that one person that maybe

had one too many at the holiday party. And there might be more to this ridiculous story than

amazing memes. This raccoon points with its tiny little adorable hands to a possible larger

trend. A new study shows that raccoons are showing signs of being domesticated. Today we are

talking about that and what it means to be a wild animal in a world dominated by one animal

in particular us. Here to discuss are Raphael

Alec, a biologist studying raccoons at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and Pam Yeh,

and evolutionary biologists studying birds, among other creatures at UCLA. Welcome to you both to

Science Friday. Hi. Thank you for having us. Yeah, thank you so much.

Raphael, let's start with that raccoon that lived its best life in the Virginia liquor store.

Yeah. When you saw that story as someone who studies raccoon domestication, what did you think?

So I actually, I got an email, a news agency was asking me for comment on that.

And it's like, I don't, I'm not sure what to say other than I'm pretty sure it was fairly drunk.

Um, but yeah, that, that was honestly perfect timing for our study.

It almost seemed like we paid off that raccoon to like break into a liquor store right after our paper came out.

Yeah.

I mean, okay, so what are the signs that, what are the signs that raccoons are getting domesticated?

...