There’s a raccoon who visits my farm at night. Let’s call him the Rrrocket.
He figured out how to break into our automatic cat feeder. Not a trivial task: it requires four to five consecutive steps in the right order, including one truly challenging move: pressing two buttons simultaneously. It’s even challenging for me! Requires two cursing words 😅
I recorded the whole learning process (not me, AI setting on the CCTV camera), but every attempt, every failure and every small win.
It looked exactly like a human child working through a puzzle - trial, error, adjustment, breakthrough. One night, the feeder was lying on its side. Broken latch, lid open, cat food just… out there. Free food - absolutely free, no hacking required.
And that naughty cute fluffy thing just walked right past it. No, seriously!! He looked at that briefly and was like, “…Meh!”
Instead, he went to the front porch and started working on a different feeder that still had the food inside. When we’d removed that one (it’s a very expensive feeder) before he could crack it... he spent the next night near the water bowl, picking up small stones, washing them 🥺 and arranging them around the chicken feeder in a mosaic-like pattern. Not looking for food, not eating. Just… creating something. I was totally shocked that he was looking for a problem to solve. And after 18 months of observation in 12 camera and analyzed recording, repeated experiments, I am absolutely certain about that.
I started wondering: what is his cognitive age? He is definitely understanding the emotional tone.
Here the proof: He started rattling the front porch feeder at night, woke me up (I am a morning person; I do not enjoy being woken up at night, not even slightly). I got on the camera and yelled at him. Genuinely annoyed and super angry.
“Go away!! Stop breaking it!! Leave now!!!” Try to yell it with Russian accent. See?
He bolted… aaand he came back in about two minutes (as usual) this time, being half-asleep and honestly a little charmed by how ridiculously cute he looked, I said the exact same words - same volume, same instructions - but in a soft, fond, delighted voice. The kind of voice you use when you catch your cat doing something naughty but adorable.
He looked at the camera, and continued dissembling the feeder. Even trying to pose from his cuter angle I believe 😈 I repeated the test three or four times that night. Angry yelling: immediate retreat. Affectionate yelling: polite acknowledgment, continued heist.
I have notebooks full of observations like this - opossums, geese, the whole farm cast. But this raccoon keeps surprising me.
