A lion might be the king of the jungle, but in the urban jungle, it’s all about the raccoon.

Raccoons that live in cities or suburbs seem to be more resourceful than their rural kin, according to preliminary research by Suzanne MacDonald, a psychology professor at York University near Toronto and a National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration grantee.

Case in point: MacDonald recently captured video of raccoons getting stuck in—and cleverly getting out of—a garbage can tightly secured with bungee cords in her suburban backyard. (Watch another National Geographic video on raccoons.)

The video was part of her ongoing experiments looking at the behavior of raccoons, a native North American mammal that has adapted incredibly well

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