Crystals Attract Trash Pandas
US Wildlife Rehab Raccoon Admissions vs US Healing Crystal Industry Revenue
As crystal industry revenue rocketed, raccoon wildlife rehab admissions rocketed with it. Every amethyst geode in a suburban window is a raccoon dinner bell. They cannot tell quartz from cat food. They simply must investigate.
“A garage full of healing crystals is, to a raccoon, indistinguishable from a Dorito factory. Their olfactory system is poetry.”
— Dr. Bandit McRehab, Urban Wildlife Biologist
A correlation, not a conclusion
What you are looking at is the trajectory of US Wildlife Rehab Raccoon Admissions set against US Healing Crystal Industry Revenue. Over the years where both series exist, they happen to move in lockstep tightly enough to produce r ≈ 99% (positive). That number sounds impressive. It is also entirely meaningless without a hypothesis.
Two unrelated trends can correlate strongly when they share an underlying driver — economic growth, technology adoption, demographic change — or when the dataset is small enough for noise to look like a signal. The only thing this chart proves is that "correlation does not imply causation" remains the most-ignored sentence in science.
Treat it as a meme with a citation. Source data is from public, reputable datasets; the implied story is not.
Put it on a thing
This correlation belongs on a wall, a mug, or a t-shirt. Pick your poison:
Share the nonsense
Generate your own
Download the Stupid Correlations app to discover thousands of absurd correlations on demand.
