More True Facts: That time Toronto lost a war against raccoons aka “The Tiny Arms Race”

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If Australia’s “Emu War” was a tactical defeat, Toronto’s “War on Raccoons” is a psychological thriller.

Get ready.

In 2015, Toronto’s then-mayor, John Tory, declared a “spring offensive against Raccoon Nation,” leading to the city spending roughly $31 million CAD (about $24 million USD) on high-tech, “raccoon-resistant” green bins.

The story is a classic tale of human engineering vs. evolution.

Here is how the “Moonshot” of trash disposal played out:

1. The Weaponry: The “Gravity Lock”

The city commissioned the Rehrig Pacific Company to design a 100-liter bin specifically to defeat the “trash panda.”

The star feature was a rotating dial handle connected to a German-engineered gravity lock.

• The Theory: A human has to physically turn the dial to open it. However, when the garbage truck tips the bin upside down, the gravity lock automatically releases so the trash can fall out.
• The Assumption: Designers assumed raccoons, lacking opposable thumbs and the height to reach the lid while standing on the ground, would be unable to generate the torque or logic needed to turn the dial.

2. The Early Victory

During testing, the city pitted dozens of raccoons against the prototype. The raccoons bit it, scratched it, and tipped it over, but they couldn’t get in.

…Mayor Tory famously quipped, “We are ready, we are armed, and we are motivated to show that we cannot be defeated by these critters.”

3. The Counter-Offensive (The Raccoons Strike Back)

Within two years of the city-wide rollout (roughly 500,000 bins), the raccoons won.

• The Heist: Residents began filming raccoons working in teams. One raccoon would tip the bin over to bring the lid to ground level. Another would use its nimble paws to systematically “fumble” with the dial until it clicked open.
• Evolution in Real-Time: Biologists noted that by creating harder locks, the city was inadvertently selective breeding smarter raccoons. I feel like there should be a text formatting that is stronger than “bold” for that sentence.
• Only the most intelligent, persistent raccoons could get the “high-calorie reward” inside, ensuring their clever genes were passed on.
• The “Middle Finger”: In one famous report by The Toronto Star, a resident found that after a raccoon failed to open the bin, it left a “parting gift”—an intentional mess right on her doorstep—as if in protest.

4. The Current Stalemate

Today, Toronto is widely considered the “Raccoon Capital of the World.” While the bins are mostly effective for the average lazy raccoon, the city’s “elite” raccoons have largely figured them out. Many residents have reverted to low-tech solutions like bungee cords, cinder blocks, or keeping the bins in armored sheds.

The war has effectively ended in a “cultural embrace.” The raccoon is now an unofficial mascot of the city, appearing on local merchandise and even being the subject of a mock-mournful vigil in 2015 when a dead raccoon (later named “Conrad”) was left on a sidewalk for hours, receiving flowers, cards, and a framed photo from passersby.

The “Sunk Cost” of the Lid

The government’s biggest mistake was thinking of the $31 million as a shield, while the raccoons viewed it as training equipment.

• The Government Logic: “If we make it 10x more expensive, it will be 10x more secure.”

• The Raccoon Logic: “If the food is harder to get, the food must be higher quality.”

• The Result: The funding didn’t stop the behavior; it just increased the “Difficulty Setting” of the game.

The “Intelligence Bottleneck”

One can argue that the Toronto government inadvertently became the world’s most expensive Selective Breeding Program.

• Before the bins, even a “dumb” raccoon could eat.

• After the bins, only the “Special Forces” raccoons—the ones with the spatial awareness to tip the bin just so and the manual dexterity to fumble the dial—could survive and reproduce in the city center.

• The government literally paid $31 million to kill off the lazy raccoons, leaving only the geniuses to repopulate the city.

Conclusion

To the city government, the $31 million was a line item in a budget. To the raccoon, that lid was the only thing standing between its family and a five-course meal of discarded lasagna. You can’t out-fund an opponent that is literally “playing for keeps.”

Citations:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/05/canada-toronto-raccoons