A raccoon in a trash can. With dexterous childlike hands and cheeky “masks,” raccoons are North America’s ubiquitous backyard bandits. The critters are so comfortable in human environments, in fact, ...

The origins of domestic cats, and their travels with ancient humans, are as enigmatic as the animals themselves. But now, scientists have found new evidence supporting the idea that the unfathomable ...

Nearly 40,000 years ago, humanity had its best idea to date: transform the age's apex predator into a sociable and loyal ally. Though early humans largely muddled through the first few thousand years ...

Biologists at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock analyzed images of urban and rural raccoons and found that city-dwelling raccoons have noticeably shorter snouts, a classic marker of early ...

People love to gush about when their cat has done something cute or funny or kind of disturbing. But is it really their cat, or is it just a cat who kind of lives with them but could also totally live ...

A surprising discovery has rewritten how cats become house pets, while unexpected and rapid evolution is making red foxes more like dogs. In short: an animal’s path to domestication is very ...

Raccoons have faces that perhaps only a mother could love, but their features seem to be changing, biologists report. After combing through nearly 20,000 images of the so-called “trash pandas” ...