These Adorable, Critically Endangered Pygmy Raccoons in Cozumel Are Teaching One Another to Turn Trash Into Toy Balls

The tourist-riddled sands of Mexico’s Cozumel Island host one of the planet’s rarest creatures: the pygmy raccoon. Fewer than 200 mature individuals roam the island in the Caribbean Sea, off the east coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. These pint-size, critically endangered mammals—which reside only in Cozumel—are known for sifting through trash cans to scavenge for leftovers.

In January, however, one young raccoon was seen bypassing the food scraps, instead plucking a receipt from a waste bin. She then carried the slip of paper to a bowl of water, dunked it repeatedly, and rolled it between her front paws and against the sand until it formed a compact, gritty ball. She began batting and chasing her creation across the ground.

She had, in effect, crafted her own toy. Now, in a study published on 25 August in the journal Wild, researchers report that this playful habit was not an isolated quirk but a skill passed among members of a pygmy raccoon family. It’s also the first documented evidence of “material culture” in the Procyonidae family, which includes raccoons, coatis and ringtails and other tree-climbing mammals.

Material culture describes physical objects and resources such as tools, clothing, toys and furniture that a group creates, uses and leaves behind to define its way of life. Members of a group learn to make or use these items by observing others. In the animal world, researchers often focus on tool use for a practical purpose, study co-author Nessie O’Neil, a biologist at Miami University in Ohio, writes on her blog.

Chimpanzees are known to extract insects with sticks, for example, and dolphins forage with the help of sea sponges. Fabricating an object purely for play is exceptionally rare across the animal kingdom. Still, “in my mind, [the raccoon’s toy] wasn’t some big major discovery,” O’Neil, who filmed the behavior while studying the impact of tourism on the animals’ health, tells Scientific American’s Isabel Gil.

She’s making a ball!” Quick fact: How tiny are these raccoons? Pygmy raccoons, also called Cozumel raccoons, weigh between six and nine pounds, around the same as a newborn human baby. Mainland raccoons, on the other hand, typically weigh between 15 and 40 pounds.