Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Years ago, when our two sons were quite small, they were playing in an abandoned sugarhouse on
a neighbor's land. Suddenly a movement caught their eye, and they looked out to see an otter humping
its way along through the forest, far from any water. More recently, on two separate occasions we've
seen an otter crossing the field below our house. As previously noted, this is far from water of any
consequence. In both instances, the otter slid down every little slope and hummock, leaving a trail that
resembled that of a tiny toboggan about eight or ten inches wide.
Otters mate in March or April. Then, following ten or eleven months of delayed implantation, the
young are born about a year after breeding. Although as many as five young may be born, litters usually
consist of two or three. The den may be a hole in the bank, beneath a fallen tree, or in an abandoned
beaver lodge.
Except for the Arctic regions, otters are found throughout nearly all of Canada, Alaska, and the con-
tinental United States, except for small portions of the Southwest. As polluted waterways have become
cleaner, otters have returned to many of their old haunts and are a fairly common sight.
SKUNKS
If otters are a great favorite with humans, skunks most decidedly are not! “As popular as a skunk at
a lawn party,” is a common expression, owing to the skunk's ability to deploy a malodorous spray as
a defensive weapon. Even the scientific name of the striped skunk, our commonest species, delivers
this message with double emphasis:
mephitis
comes from the Latin word for a noxious stench, and the
name
Mephitis mephitis
is likely to be fervently endorsed by anyone unfortunate enough to be on the
receiving end of a skunk's ire!
Curiously, skunks have fared better in the world of cartoons than in the real-life opinion of many.
In addition to the cute Flower in Walt Disney's movie
Bambi,
there is the excessively and irrepressibly
amorous character Pepe le Pew.
The word
skunk,
like the common names of several other North American animals (e.g., moose,
woodchuck) represents the white settlers' version of a Native American word—in this case the Algon-
quian
seganku.
During the early days of colonization, rules of spelling were considerably less precise
than they are now; one early spelling of
skunk
by a Massachusetts colonist was
squnck.
According to
today's rules of pronunciation, this spelling results in “skwunk,” a variation so delightful that our fam-
ily regularly uses it.
At first glance, the portly skunk, which normally moves at a most sedate pace, would seem to have
little in common with such swift, slender relatives as the weasel, fisher, marten, and mink. Like all
members of the family Mustelidae, however, skunks have twin anal scent glands. Unlike the others,
though, which can only dribble a tiny bit of scent, skunks can evert their anal glands—about the size of
a grape—and discharge a potent blast of an oily, clinging substance with a most disagreeable smell.
