They climb AND dig and they have thumbs!! They are terrible! We've lost several hens to raccoons, until my husband made a small enclosure to lock them up at night. He built it from some left over commercial bathroom partisans from a job he had been working on, with 4 slide locks on the door. They haven't figured out how to get the door open yet, but they have figured out how to open the bottom two slide locks. We'll be installing padlocks soon. I hate raccoons.