A new exhibition explores the city's evolving relationship with wildlife

The relationship between the city's sprawling urban landscape and its wildlife is the focus of a new exhibit at the Museum of Toronto.

Toronto is North America's fourth-largest city, an extraordinary, ever-expanding metropolis that straddles the shores of Lake Ontario, and it's easy to forget the honks, wailing sirens, and buzzing streets as you navigate its endless, graffiti-covered alleys. the highways have a thriving network of wildlife.

Entitled “Toronto Gone Wild,” the exhibition begins by exploring the world of a common but mislabeled enemy; raccoon. Often labeled as a perpetual nuisance, raccoons are actually smart, adaptable, and most impressively, they can open drawers to keep them out of our uneaten scraps.

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“Raccoons are very similar to people,” Amy Lavender Harris, co-curator, author, urbanist and geographer, told Now Toronto. “They're very smart,” he said.

Part of the exhibit explores how their species' relationship with us is changing, why humans make raccoons' lives miserable, and how humans and raccoons can peacefully coexist.

Historian, professor and curator Jennifer Bonnell added: Raccoons help keep our cities clean. They are scavengers like bees and pigeons, he explained.

“In the city, the animals that we really want to hate are very important in terms of being city scavengers,” Bonnell continued.

The exhibit explores a wide range of urban habitats and behaviors, from the survival of bees to the fascinating lives of urban coyotes, the sustainable presence of plants, and the animated world of lakeside creatures.

Almost all urban flora and fauna perform ecosystem services that we may not appreciate on a day-to-day basis, Harris said, but if they're removed, we'll notice their absence.

“Things are going to be out of balance, it's about coyotes, it's about raccoons, it's about squirrels, they're all in the space negotiations.”

Toronto Gone Wild is at the Museum of Toronto until August 3rd. Entry is free.

See the museum's website for more information.