Things You May Not Know About Skunks

Striped skunk
Photo: Danita Delimont on Shutterstock

“Nature abhors not only a vacuum, but monotony also.” —Roy Bedichek, 1947.

Dell J. Hood

While sitting at my worktable early on a fine mid-winter morning a few years back, dawn still a moment away and a pleasant breeze coming through the barely cracked windows, I detected a familiar fragrance announcing the return of the elusive striped skunk who includes our small property in its nocturnal foraging. It hadn’t been by for some weeks.

Skunks are not generally popular with Central Texas residents. When people tell skunk stories, they usually involve getting sprayed and how to deal with the lingering stench. But as with many mammals across the state, skunk populations are declining and could accelerate, given that few Texans are likely to champion the lowly skunk.

Indeed, the Texas Legislature in 2023 passed and the governor signed an amendment to the state Health and Safety Code (§825.033), allowing the commissioners courts in four counties near Corpus Christi (Aransas, Bee, Refugio, San Patricio) to offer bounties “for the destruction of (several named species) and other predatory animals in the county to preserve game and to protect the interests of livestock and poultry raisers.”

The law provides for a bounty of 50 cents for skunks, raccoons, and opossums. (Top predators can garner $5). The law doesn’t require any proof of loss caused by the animals. Rather than trying to eradicate a native mammal that benefits agriculture by controlling pests that can damage field crops, the law should recognize a societal interest in preserving and protecting skunks and authorize reimbursement for any documented damage attributed to the skunk.

Nearly a century after Aldo Leopold recognized the inherent right of every species to exist and to fulfill a role in nature’s wondrous tapestry, it is a disappointing test of our commitment to that moral standard that in 2023 we can officially declare the value of one skunk as 50 cents.

Numerous books and online resources give detailed information about the appearance, habits, habitats, and food preferences of the skunks of North America. Rather than reiterate this basic information, I offer some less readily available information about these often misunderstood creatures. By knowing them better, we may appreciate them as the unique and beautiful animals they are.

What is a Skunk?

Skunks are omnivorous mammals in the order Carnivora, with about 12 species in three genera widely distributed in North, Central, and South America. Eighty to 90 percent of skunks’ diet is other animals; the rest is plants. Skunks weigh from less than one pound to more than 10 pounds, with the females generally smaller than males. They are easily recognized by their distinctive black-and-white coloration and strong defensive musk sprays.

How did it get that name?

Unknown in Europe, the critter had no English name until 1634, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, when William Wood used “squunckes” in New Englands Prospect, an early popular description of life in the new colonies published in London. This was an adaptation of the Abenaki name transliterated into English as “segankw,” with variations on that name in other Native American languages throughout the Northeast. The current spelling was first recorded in 1775 in an early travel narrative by Andrew Burnaby: “There is a species of polecat in this part of America, which is commonly called a skunk.” The misidentification as a polecat—a member of the weasel family with species in both Europe and North America—was common through the 19th century. The city Chicago got that name as the English adaptation of the Cree and Ojibwe word shee-gawk—“skunk land.”

How long have skunks been around?

The oldest fossil recognized as a skunk was found in Germany and dated to 11 million to 12 million years ago. Genetic analyses suggest their ancestry may go back 30 million to 40 million years. In North America, the fossil record dates from about 1.8 million years ago at a site in Nebraska. With the end of the Pleistocene ice age, members of the family spread in all directions to populate most of the continent. Our skunks have cousins in Indonesia known as stink badgers, which form their own genus in the family.

What species are in Texas?

Striped skunk
Photo: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/species/skunk/

As many as five species are native to Texas. The one we are most likely to see in the Hill Country is the striped skunk, the most widespread species in North America. The two white stripes that run from its head to tail are its most visible identification, but several variations on this pattern have been found. The striped skunk prefers woody and brushy areas and forages at night for insects, snails, lizards, mice, other small animals, and aquatic prey. It makes its dens in rock outcrops, hollow logs, and trees.

The other Texas species differ mainly in their ranges, sizes, and color patterns. The Eastern and Western spotted skunks, considered by some authorities as one species, are the smallest of the family (except for a pygmy species in Mexico) and occur in isolated populations in most of the state. At least one subspecies has been recommended for listing under the Endangered Species Act—a spotted skunk confined to two islands in the Gulf of California. The hooded skunk once ranged over much of southwestern Texas, but by the late 20th century it was found in small numbers only in the trans-Pecos area. The hog-nosed skunk occurs in southern and western Texas and is the largest of the family, weighing up to five pounds.

Who first studied skunks?

Carl Linnaeus, born in 1707, studied thousands of animal species, including skunks. He died in January 1778, never having left Europe. All the specimens of plants and animals he described from other continents were either sent to him by contacts abroad or were in collections in European botanical gardens and zoos, especially those in Uppsala, Copenhagen, and London. He is the recognized authority for the eastern spotted skunk, Spilogale putorius (Linnaeus). Based on dental characteristics and the presence of enlarged anal scent glands, in 1758 he classified his specimens as members of the large and diversified weasel family, the Mustelidae. One of his students, Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber, is the authority for the striped skunk, Mephitis mephitis (Schreber. 1776). A German physician, botanist, zoologist, and explorer, Martin Heinrich Christian Lichtenstein, described two of the Texas skunk species, the hooded skunk (Mephitis macroura L. 1832) and the hog-nosed skunk (Conepatus mesoleucus L. 1832). Its genus designation, Conepatus, is from the Nahuatl term (conepatl) for a white-backed skunk.

In his extensively documented work, The Explorers’ Texas: The Animals They Found, the Texas naturalist Del Weniger devoted seven pages to a review of historical records of skunks from the earliest explorers through the early 20th century. The bibliography of sources he mined lists 352 separate items, from letters, memoirs, and travelogues to scientific documents and reports filed by government expeditions. He notes that skunks were numerous and found in almost every part of the state and that early explorers left good records of their encounters with skunks, not only for their unpleasant aspects but also because once the scent glands were removed, skunk flesh “was most palatable,” as one traveler reported. They were eaten by Comanches who roamed Texas, by soldiers in forts and on the move, and by many individual travelers.

Weniger commented that the double usage of the Latin name for the striped skunk, Mephitis mephitis, was to emphasize the strength and foulness of the musk—“bad, bad odor.” Of the hooded skunk, now possibly extirpated in its Texas range, he noted that Audubon acquired a specimen near San Antonio in the middle of the 19th century, indicating it once was more widespread through southern parts of Texas.

Did John James Audubon study skunks?

Audubon reported that the hog-nosed skunk, occasionally also called the white-backed skunk, was not found in the U.S. north and east of Texas.

Biodiversity Heritage Library https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/104298#page/9/mode/1up

Audubon’s reputation is based on his plates of birds, but in the last decade of his life he published a lushly illustrated work in three volumes: The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. He included one plate of a skunk in each volume, each a different species. The common names he used have long since been abandoned. Volume One’s illustration has a striped skunk group in a den, with three specimens showing some of the variations in color patterning of this species, all identified as “common American skunks.” For Volume Two, he used the hog-nosed skunk (possibly the one he acquired near San Antonio) and which he called a Texan skunk. Volume Three’s plate is of a hooded skunk with the common name “large-tailed skunk.” Given that much of Audubon’s travels covered the eastern third of the continent, it is puzzling that he did not include the widely distributed species in that area, the eastern spotted skunk.

Why did people breed skunks?

Captive breeding of skunks for their pelts began in the last decades of the 19th century and continued well into the 1900s. When it began, the main market for the skins was the burgeoning fur industry in Europe. Depending on their quality, the skins were sold under various names, with the best identified as sable. One source reported that as many 100,000 skins were exported each year.

Were skunks misclassified?

The foremost American authority on all things skunk is Professor Jerry Dragoo at New Mexico State University, founder of the Dragoo Institute for the Betterment of Skunks and Skunk Reputations. Molecular-level studies of skunk DNA by Dr. Dragoo and his colleague Rodney Honeycutt in the 1980s revealed that the traditional classification of skunks in a subfamily of the mustelids—weasels, badgers, minks, and ferrets—was incorrect. Their research showed that skunks are genetically distinctive enough to be given their own family, Mephitidae (from the Latin for foul smelling or a noxious vapor), together with the two species of stink badgers of Southeast Asia in their own genus, Mydaus.

What about that famous spray?

Skunks are non-aggressive and prefer to avoid dangerous confrontations. They usually adopt a visually intimidating posture as their first defense, including making aggressive noises described as growls or grunts, baring their teeth, arching their back, and turning their rears towards the threat. They use their spray as a last resort for defense. It is a viscous, oily liquid containing sulfur compounds formed in the pair of glands surrounding their anus. It is not urine. The glands contain enough of this fluid to emit five or six sprays, which skunks can project up to ten feet with great accuracy. If it depletes its spray, a skunk needs eight to 10 days to rebuild its supply. During this time, it is basically defenseless.

Many mammals have scent glands, which may have evolved as modifications of their sweat glands and are used primarily to define territories or to signal receptivity to mating. The skunk family has taken the process a step further, pushing their hormonal production to develop compounds in their musk strong enough to deter predators such as wolves, coyotes, and big cats. The great horned owl is reputed to be the only creature that can take a skunk without being targeted by the spray because it can attack from any direction in silence at night.

Why are skunk populations declining?

In recent decades, researchers have recorded declines in the populations of some species. The Texas Almanac for 2022-2023 devotes one long paragraph to the five species of skunks in the state, giving their ranges and distribution. Of note is the statement that the hooded skunk “was found in limited numbers in the Big Bend and adjacent parts of the trans-Pecos but may be extirpated from the state.” Schmidly, in 2004, reported that a subspecies of the hog-nosed skunk native to the Big Thicket region was extinct. Destruction of suitable habitats resulting from increasing suburbanization over much of the state and the spread of large-scale intensive agriculture are driving reductions in skunk populations. Seventy-five years ago Bedichek noted that highway traffic, “particularly at night, leaves a mangled litter of small animals—rabbits, skunks, opossums…and so on, which must have increased our vulture population many fold…”

Why hasn’t more been written about skunks?

A cursory review of books on animals in a few area libraries indicates that skunks are largely overlooked in many discussions. One title first published in 1965 and revised for a 1973 edition, The Animal Kingdom, by Robert T. Orr, a professor of biology at San Francisco University for 22 years, had just three sentences on skunks in its 367 pages. The Encyclopedia of Animal Predators, by Janet Vorwald Dohner, written for those raising livestock, poultry, or fish and published in 2017, has one-page descriptions of the striped and spotted skunks and discusses their threats to pets and stock and how to counter them.

Like coyotes and raccoons, skunks have in some areas adapted to the spread of human habitation, yet we see them much less often than other wildlife. When I smelled that striped visitor a few years back, it occurred to me that it had been years since the last skunk in our area, and I wondered why. Although skunks are common in some areas, the populations of several species are low and dropping. Their average life span in the wild is only two to three years. Skunks are an important part of the native wildlife of Texas and North America and serve as controls on many of the invertebrate and smaller mammal pests of both agricultural and settled areas, but they suffer from loss of habitat and the effects of chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides which bioaccumulate up the food chain into their preferred food sources.

There is still much to learn about skunks, but we already know enough to appreciate them for their beauty, their uniqueness, and their inherent right to thrive in the land they’ve claimed for millennia.

This hog-nosed skunk discovered a little left over cat food inside Eva Frost’s shed. One might ask, what would any good Hays County Master Naturalist do when confronted with such a precarious situation? Answer: grab her camera and take pictures of course!
Photos: Eva Frost

Sources:

Roy Bedichek. Adventures with a Texas Naturalist. New revised edition, 1994, University of Texas Press. First published 1947.

Del Weniger. The Explorers’ Texas: Volume 2 - The animals they found. Eakin Press, Austin. First edition, 1997.

David J. Schmidly. The Mammals of Texas; revised edition. Austin; University of Texas Press, 2004.

The Dragoo Institute for the Betterment of Skunks and Skunk Reputations. http://dragoo.org/mephitidae.

Animal Diversity Web. University of Michigan Museum of Zoology. Mephitidae – skunks and stink badgers. https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Mephitidae.

John James Audubon and John Bachman. The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. J. Audubon and John Bachman. 3 vols., published 1845-1848. New York Public Library Digital Collection.

Oxford Encyclopedia of Mammals, 3rd edition, online edition, 2007. Skunks and stink badgers.

Wilfred Blunt. The Compleat Naturalist: A Life of Linnaeus. Viking Press, 1971.