I began my research by broadly looking into different types of animals and how animal behaviorists, psychologists and other scientists and researchers viewed each animal’s respective intelligence level. Each animal was given a short description and it mentioned their strengths along with some common misconceptions. I narrowed it down to animals I was interested in because of their form for sculpture or because I generally liked it. I began researching raccoon’s intelligence, as I find them both cute and incredibly nimble and crafty, which led me to an American Psychology Association article on raccoon intelligence. As most people would expect, raccoons are very sneaky, craft and nimble. They have good use with their hands, however, two separate researchers running separate observations and experiments found raccoons have an intellect closer to cats due to their swiftness with solving puzzles and different problems as well as the amount of time they remember the solution for those puzzles. I wanted to research further and try to look at more animals, like cats, which were interesting but ultimately I decided to use raccoons for my projects. Despite the reputation raccoons and animals as a whole receive as lesser life forms compared to the human race, raccoons are intelligent, crafty, resilient, resourceful and agile creatures who adapt to their environment no matter what. Throughout generations of humans changing the world around them, they find steady sources of food and have adapted to survive and thrive in their conditions.
