Youre not supposed to be here! How wild animals are adapting to our cities

On July 9, 2015, a dead raccoon appeared on a Toronto sidewalk and, for reasons no one fully understood, four men from a nearby office decided to hold a funeral.They bought a cellophane-wrapped rose, signed a card, and placed it on the corpse, whom they named Conrad.In “Our Wild Familiars” (Crown, out Tuesday), Dan Werb uses Conrad’s wake as the doorway into an exploration of synanthropes — a term derived from Greek that means “together with man” and is used to describe wild creatures who have found niches in human-built cities.“I love the story of Conrad, because it’s so unlikely and revealing,” Werb told The Post.

“There are hundreds of thousands of raccoons living in Toronto, and many die every day.Everyone’s first instinct is to ignore them … [but Conrad] revealed that we actually love the animals around us, precisely because they are funny, and elegant, and make us think differently about what makes a city special.”“Our Wild Familiars” looks at other examples of synanthropes, including the creatures living in our garbage cans, roofs, alleys, sewers, parks, train stations, courthouse hallways, and polluted seafloors.

Cities have become active natural systems, places where animals are adapting to human architecture, food waste, noise, heat, traffic, and danger.Toronto spent millions on “raccoon-proof” garbage bins that require turning a circular lock, a task raccoons shouldn’t be able to manage without opposable thumbs.One raccoon figured it out anyway.

Within a year, raccoons across the city had learned the trick too.Werb calls this “reversal learning,” the cognitive ability to unlearn old strategies when circumstances change.Biologists studying the phenomenon say raccoon intelligence is evolving faster than usual in cities, where raccoons are constantly forced to learn new rules.

“Where this is all eventually going to lead is anyone’s guess,” Werb said, “which is very exciting.”Shortly after moving to B...