It’s a regrettable reality that there is never enough time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across. So every month, we highlight a handful of the best stories that nearly slipped through the cracks. March’s list includes puzzle-solving raccoons; the physics of folding a crepe; the rediscovery of a lost page from an Archimedes manuscript; and the 2026 winner of the annual Dance Your PhD contest, among other highlights.
Puzzle-solving raccoons Raccoons (aka “trash pandas”) are notorious pests in urban and suburban settings because of their penchant for rooting around trash and compost bins; even latches and other safeguards can’t entirely keep them at bay. It might be more than food searching behavior, scientists at the University of British Columbia concluded. According to their paper published in the journal Animal Behavior, raccoons are not only nimble and dextrous with their paws, they also excel at solving puzzles, which might be why they thrive so well in human-centric environments.
The team tested captive raccoons by placing a tasty marshmallow in a transparent puzzle box, outfitted with latches, sliding doors, and knobs. There were nine separate ways to retrieve the marshmallow, some easy, some medium difficulty, and some hard. Each raccoon engaged in several 20-minute trials so the team could observe their behavior.
Even after retrieving the marshmallow and eating it, the raccoons still kept trying to open the other mechanisms. They were more likely to explore multiple openings when the solution was easy and tended to stick with known easier solutions when the puzzle was hard. But even at the most difficult level, they still kept exploring.
The authors interpreted this as a form of flexible problem-solving, with the raccoons balancing their curiosity and effort against potential risks. The team concluded that this behavior is better described as “information foraging.”
