"With their probing paws and destructive behavior, the raccoon has gained a reputation as a garbage bandit, capable of finding a meal in any urban landscape. Yet despite their proximity to our homes and their evident resourcefulness, very few researchers have truly tested the problem-solving abilities of the “trash panda.” As part of a multi-year study exploring the cognition of raccoons, researchers at the University of Wyoming’s Animal Cognition Lab are pushing the limits of the species’ learning by providing both captivity and street-dwelling specimens with a variety of tests."