Malcolm Gladwell

It would be helpful, though, if there were a kind of consensus, a lingua franca animal that people could generalize from.

Cole still had to find an experiment of his own to get his PhD. These raccoons seemed promising.

Cole still had to find an experiment of his own to get his PhD. These raccoons seemed promising.

Cole began running tests on the raccoons. He put them in boxes with complicated locks every day for a whole academic year, and he found they were incredible. Any box, it seemed, any puzzle, the raccoon could solve it. And what's more, the animal wasn't just going through the motions. The raccoon seemed curious about what he was doing.

Cole began running tests on the raccoons. He put them in boxes with complicated locks every day for a whole academic year, and he found they were incredible. Any box, it seemed, any puzzle, the raccoon could solve it. And what's more, the animal wasn't just going through the motions. The raccoon seemed curious about what he was doing.

And Cole thought there was evidence that raccoons could hold images in their mind. Nobody was making these kinds of claims about other animals. So Cole started publishing his research, writing to leading figures in psychology, saying, hey, these raccoons are really unusually intelligent, maybe as intelligent as monkeys, which seems to me like it should make them a great model organism for people.

And Cole thought there was evidence that raccoons could hold images in their mind. Nobody was making these kinds of claims about other animals. So Cole started publishing his research, writing to leading figures in psychology, saying, hey, these raccoons are really unusually intelligent, maybe as intelligent as monkeys, which seems to me like it should make them a great model organism for people.

except there was a movement that was growing swiftly within cole's field right around then which was explicitly uncomfortable with any talk of an animal having a mind and it was fast becoming the only show in town it was called behaviorism all this history is documented in an amazing article by michael pettit titled the problem of raccoon intelligence in behaviorist america

except there was a movement that was growing swiftly within cole's field right around then which was explicitly uncomfortable with any talk of an animal having a mind and it was fast becoming the only show in town it was called behaviorism all this history is documented in an amazing article by michael pettit titled the problem of raccoon intelligence in behaviorist america

Which is one of my favorite academic essays of all time. Because the raccoon was indeed a problem.

Which is one of my favorite academic essays of all time. Because the raccoon was indeed a problem.

Bob Bailey. He used to be the top guy at a legendary behaviorist organization called Animal Behavior Enterprises. The founders of that company wrote an infamous paper questioning the fundamentals of behaviorism, the idea that all animals were blank slates you could write whatever you wanted on. A key example? One raccoon they'd trained to put coins in a box.

Bob Bailey. He used to be the top guy at a legendary behaviorist organization called Animal Behavior Enterprises. The founders of that company wrote an infamous paper questioning the fundamentals of behaviorism, the idea that all animals were blank slates you could write whatever you wanted on. A key example? One raccoon they'd trained to put coins in a box.

Eventually, and most of the time, were bad news for people trying to turn psychology into a reputable hard science. That raccoon box situation came later on. But this exact dynamic put a bit of a target on Lawrence Cole, the frontier raccoonist. And if you know anything about the history of psychology, you'll know how the problem of the raccoon was solved. Raccoon erasure.

Eventually, and most of the time, were bad news for people trying to turn psychology into a reputable hard science. That raccoon box situation came later on. But this exact dynamic put a bit of a target on Lawrence Cole, the frontier raccoonist. And if you know anything about the history of psychology, you'll know how the problem of the raccoon was solved. Raccoon erasure.

The raccoon does not figure prominently at all. But you know which animal does? The rat. I'm curious about how you account for that historical process of raccoon erasure that begins around then.

The raccoon does not figure prominently at all. But you know which animal does? The rat. I'm curious about how you account for that historical process of raccoon erasure that begins around then.

But it wasn't just about convenience. It was also difficult to generalize from raccoon experiments. Rats, for example, behaved in predictable, repeatable ways. Raccoons, not so much. How is a scientist supposed to work with an animal who each spring gets wanderlust and attempts to break out of their cage?

But it wasn't just about convenience. It was also difficult to generalize from raccoon experiments. Rats, for example, behaved in predictable, repeatable ways. Raccoons, not so much. How is a scientist supposed to work with an animal who each spring gets wanderlust and attempts to break out of their cage?

What do you do when your experimental raccoon colony does escape and moves into your lab's ventilation system? As behaviorism gained steam, scientists in the big cities attacked the nascent science of raccoons. Wasn't this all a bit silly? Meanwhile, other behaviorists complained that keeping raccoon colonies was really just a huge pain in the neck. And so we got the century of the rat.