Skunk

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Skunks belong to the family Mephitidae, a group of mammals whose reputation travels far ahead of them. Charles Darwin encountered them in South America in 1839 and wrote about an animal so confident in its own power that it roamed the open plain in daylight, fearing neither dog nor man. He recorded that the smell could be perceived at a league's distance. On one occasion, sailing into the harbour of Monte Video with the wind blowing offshore, his crew caught the odor from aboard the Beagle itself. What makes an animal so formidable that wolves, foxes, and badgers will simply walk away from a confrontation? How did a creature with poor eyesight become one of nature's most effective survivors? And why, despite that famous stench, do people in seventeen American states keep them as pets?

• 2. A Name with History

  ›

  The word skunk dates from the 1630s, drawn from a southern New England Algonquian language, probably Abenaki. The original word was seganku, which descends from the Proto-Algonquian root meaning roughly "urinating fox." That etymology is blunt, accurate, and more than four centuries old.

  In 1634, a Jesuit missionary wrote what may be the earliest formal description of the animal in English-language records. His account appears in The Jesuit Relations. He compared the creature to a small dog or cat, praised its shining black fur and twin white stripes, and then reached for religious metaphor to express what it smelled like. He wrote that no sewer had ever smelled so bad, and that the animal ought to serve as "a symbol of sin." He believed the sin allegedly smelled by Saint Catherine de Sienna must have carried the same odor.

  That 1634 account also noted the practical consequences: two skunks had been killed in the mission's courtyard, and the smell persisted throughout the building for several days afterward. In the American South, the animal is sometimes called a polecat, despite polecats being only distantly related. As a verb, "to skunk" entered English to describe an overwhelming defeat in a game or contest. By 1841, the noun was already documented as an insult.

• 3. Body Built for Two Jobs

  ›

  Skunk species range from about 15.6 to 37 inches in length and from roughly 1.1 pounds in the case of spotted skunks to about 18 pounds for hog-nosed skunks. Their bodies are moderately elongated, with short but well-muscled legs and notably long front claws.

  All skunks are striped from birth, even newborns who are still blind and deaf. The patterns differ across species: a single thick stripe, two thinner parallel stripes, or a series of spots and broken stripes as seen in the spotted skunk. Some individuals are brown or grey; a few are cream-colored. The black-and-white pattern shared by most species is not decorative. It is aposematic coloration, meaning it functions as a warning signal to predators.

  Their vision is notably weak. Objects more than about 3 meters away are difficult for a skunk to see clearly, which makes road traffic one of their most consistent threats. That poor eyesight sits alongside sharp senses of smell and hearing. The lifespan in the wild can reach seven years, with an average of six years. In captivity, skunks may survive for up to ten years.

• 4. The Chemistry of Defense

  ›

  Skunk spray consists of a mixture of organosulfur compounds, specifically three low-molecular-weight thiols: (E)-2-butene-1-thiol, 3-methyl-1-butanethiol, and 2-quinolinemethanethiol, along with acetate thioesters of those compounds. The human nose can detect these chemicals at concentrations of only 11.3 parts per billion.

  Muscles located alongside the scent glands allow a skunk to direct the spray with high accuracy at targets up to 3 meters away. The spray can cause eye irritation and temporary blindness. Darwin's field notes from 1839 confirmed that a dog urged to attack would have its courage immediately stopped by even a few drops of the oil, which brought on violent sickness. He wrote that whatever was once polluted by it was "forever useless."

  A skunk carries enough for five or six successive sprays, roughly 15 cubic centimeters. Replenishing that supply takes up to ten days. Because depleting the supply takes time to recover, skunks go through an elaborate warning sequence before actually spraying: hissing, foot-stamping, and raising the tail in what is described as a deimatic or threat posture. The spray is detectable by a human nose up to 5.6 kilometers downwind.

  Most predators of the Americas, including wolves, foxes, and badgers, avoid attacking skunks. The great horned owl is the one consistent exception, apparently unaffected by the spray. Researchers found the remains of 57 striped skunks in a single great horned owl nest.

• 5. Eating and Seasons

  ›

  Skunks are omnivores whose diet shifts with the calendar. They eat insects, larvae, earthworms, grubs, rodents, lizards, salamanders, frogs, snakes, birds, moles, and eggs. They also eat berries, roots, leaves, grasses, fungi, and nuts.

  Their long front claws do substantial work. Skunks break apart rotting logs to reach insects inside, and they dig into lawns in search of grubs and earthworms, leaving small pits that are recognizable signs of their presence. Those same claws help pin down live prey.

  In colder parts of their range, skunks do not fully hibernate but enter a dormant phase in which they feed rarely and remain mostly inactive. Multiple females, as many as twelve, may huddle together in a communal den through winter. Males typically den alone. The same winter den is often reused from year to year.

• 6. Reproduction and Early Life

  ›

  Mating takes place in early spring. Skunks are polygynous, meaning successful males mate with more than one female. The male takes no part in raising the offspring.

  Before giving birth, usually in May, the female digs a den for her litter. Litters typically contain four to seven kits. The gestation period runs about 66 days, and skunks are placental mammals.

  Newborn kits are blind and deaf at birth, though they already have a soft layer of fur. Their eyes open around three weeks after birth. The kits are weaned roughly two months after birth and stay with their mother until they are ready to mate at approximately one year of age. From the beginning, the mother is protective; she will spray at any perceived threat to her kits. That maternal behavior includes teaching the honeybee-hunting technique, passing a learned foraging strategy directly from one generation to the next.

• 7. Skunks and Human Life

  ›

  Skunks are common in suburban environments and frequently encounter domestic dogs, which are often sprayed. The belief that tomato juice neutralizes skunk odor is widespread but wrong. These household remedies only appear to work because of olfactory fatigue, meaning the nose temporarily stops registering a persistent smell.

  In 1993, the American chemist Paul Krebaum developed a formula that actually works by chemically converting the odor-causing thiols into odorless acids. The Humane Society of the United States endorses it for use on sprayed dogs. The formula calls for hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and liquid dish soap.

  Skunks occasionally bite humans, though this is rare for healthy animals. The Centers for Disease Control recorded 1,494 cases of rabies in skunks in the United States for 2006, which represented about 21.5 percent of all reported rabies cases across species that year. Skunks are actually less prominent than raccoons as rabies vectors nationally, though the picture shifts by region: raccoons dominate along the Atlantic coast and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, while skunks predominate across the Midwest, the western Gulf, and in California.

  Mephitis mephitis, the striped skunk, is the species most commonly kept as a pet. Skunks can legally be kept as pets in 17 American states, and their scent glands are typically removed surgically for that purpose. In the United Kingdom, keeping skunks as pets is permitted, but the Animal Welfare Act 2006 made the surgical removal of their scent glands illegal.