For the new study, she and 16 graduate and undergraduate students gathered nearly 20,000 photographs of raccoons across the contiguous U.S. from the community science platform iNaturalist. The team found that raccoons in urban environments had a snout that was 3.5 percent shorter than that of their rural cousins.
Or maybe people in cities take more photos of “cuter” animals?
If humans are more likely to take photos of racoons they find cute, we’d expect those racoons to have cuter features than the average racoon. It might not be actual change going on, is the point being made.
We don’t conciously notice the snout length, just the ones we think are cute are probably slightly more likely to have a shorter snout.
On a 5cm snout, 3.5% is less than 2 mm. You not only wouldn’t notice it with the naked eye, it’s almost a small enough difference to get lost in the noise .
The study is saying they’re already seeing these imperceptible differences in racoons they’re measuring.
Or maybe people in cities take more photos of “cuter” animals?
If they’re iNaturalist photo submissions then they’re submitting every raccoon (and other animal) they see
I mean every raccoon in the study was photographed. So this wouldn’t explain any difference within that sample.
I don’t think someone would notice a 3.5% shorter snout when they took the picture.
If humans are more likely to take photos of racoons they find cute, we’d expect those racoons to have cuter features than the average racoon. It might not be actual change going on, is the point being made.
We don’t conciously notice the snout length, just the ones we think are cute are probably slightly more likely to have a shorter snout.
My point is that the change in length is only 3.5%, more than someone would notice when taking a photo.
If it was not noticeably cuter, then it would cause no advantage and the theory falls. (Which is possible, of course.)
On a 5cm snout, 3.5% is less than 2 mm. You not only wouldn’t notice it with the naked eye, it’s almost a small enough difference to get lost in the noise .
The study is saying they’re already seeing these imperceptible differences in racoons they’re measuring.
Not individually, but over nearly 20,000 instances.