Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
trip himself with the stick as he approached the skunk, for it was indeed the marauding skunk in the
trap. There sat Old Floyd on the ground, stick and lantern beside him, and the skunk in his lap! Like
Queen Victoria, the skunk was not amused and had demonstrated its displeasure to the fullest possible
extent. Needless to say, Old Floyd was something of a pariah for a considerable period thereafter.
If skunks haven't been genetically programmed to regard humans as a major threat, the same most
emphatically can't be said for cats and dogs— to the considerable discomfiture of countless pet owners.
For example, our daughter's cat leaped out an open window one night and landed on or beside a skunk.
Retribution was swift and impressive!
Depending somewhat on wind direction, skunks can spray about twelve feet. They can also spray
two or three times without recharging their scent glands—and a “discharged” skunk is nothing to cozy
up to, for it only requires about a half hour to recharge its scent glands.
Yet another myth about skunks is that either the female or the male, depending on whose version one
hears, can't spray. While it's true that female skunks are slightly less apt to spray than males, they def-
initely can and will use their scent in self-defense. Besides, who can determine a skunk's gender until
it's far too late?
One of the worst features of skunk spray is its uncanny longevity. Despite repeated baths in one or
more of the recommended antidotes to skunk spray, such as tomato juice or vanilla extract, the odor
keeps returning for weeks whenever it's damp or wet. This is because certain very persistent com-
pounds in skunk spray break down in the presence of water to produce the characteristic skunk odor.
An especially interesting feature of skunk scent is that a small percentage of people actually enjoy it!
Evidently this is because some individuals have different scent receptors and perceive many odors—not
just skunk—very differently from most people.
Although one encounter with a skunk is enough to deter future attempts by most predators, there is
one prominent exception. As previously noted, great horned owls, which, like many birds, apparently
have little if any sense of smell, regularly swoop down and kill skunks. Indeed, these fierce raptors are
probably the skunk's only important enemy, aside from humans.
“Polecat” is a common term for the skunk in the United States, but this is a misnomer. The true
polecat (the name comes from the French for pullet-cat, which probably memorializes the animal's de-
predations on domestic fowl) is a large European weasel known for its strong, unpleasant scent. As in
the case of the fisher, European settlers probably began calling the skunk by the name of the nearest
European equivalent.
Skunks occasionally have very large litters (the largest, recorded in Pennsylvania, was eighteen), but
litters usually range from four to eight. Except in the eyes of devoted skunk haters, few sights in nature
are more appealing than a mother skunk with her brood trailing single-file like cars behind the locomot-
ive on a miniature railroad. However, therein lies a certain element of danger, for some people believe
the rumor that baby skunks can't spray. There is a grain of truth in this: baby skunks can't spray for
