Striped Skunk (Mephitis mephitis): Facts, Spray and Diet

What does a striped skunk look like?

A striped skunk has a stocky body, a small, triangular head, short legs and a long, bushy tail. The fur is glossy black with a thin white stripe down the middle of the forehead and a broad white patch on the nape. From there, white usually splits into two stripes that run down the back in a V shape toward the tail.

The pattern varies a lot. Some skunks have broad stripes that almost cover the back, others have short stripes or are nearly all black, and the tail may be fringed or tipped with white. The bold contrast is a warning signal, known as aposematic coloration, telling predators that this animal is not worth attacking.

The front feet carry long, curved claws for digging, while the hind claws are shorter. Striped skunks walk flat-footed with a slow, waddling gait. Their eyesight is poor, and they probably cannot see objects clearly more than a few meters away, but they have a good sense of smell and hearing.

Both the common and the scientific names refer to the smell. The word skunk comes from an Algonquian language of southern New England, while mephitis is Latin for a foul, poisonous vapor rising from the ground. Repeating it in the binomial, Mephitis mephitis, makes the striped skunk, in effect, the “stink of stinks”.

How big is a striped skunk?

Striped skunks are about the size of a house cat. Males are slightly larger than females.

Weight changes sharply through the year. Skunks fatten up in autumn and can lose up to about half of their body weight over a long, cold winter spent mostly in the den.

Habitat and range

The striped skunk lives from southern Canada across almost all of the contiguous United States into northern Mexico. It is absent from the far north and from the driest deserts. It lives from sea level to high mountain valleys, mostly below about 1,800 m (5,900 ft).

Its favorite habitats are mixed landscapes: woodland edges, grassy fields, brushy ravines, farmland with hedgerows and creek banks. Striped skunks have adapted well to people and are common in suburbs and city parks, where gardens, lawns and buildings offer food and shelter.

Fossils of the genus Mephitis in North America date back more than a million years. During the last Ice Age striped skunks were found mainly in the southern United States and spread north and west as the ice sheets retreated.

Several other skunks share parts of its range, including the hooded skunk in the Southwest, spotted skunks, which are smaller and have broken white markings, and the American hog-nosed skunk.

What do striped skunks eat?

Striped skunks are omnivores, but insects make up most of their diet in the warmer months. They eat beetles and their larvae, grasshoppers, crickets, caterpillars, bees and wasps, plus earthworms, spiders and crayfish. Small, cone-shaped pits in a lawn are often a sign of a skunk digging for grubs.

They also take mice, voles, young rabbits, frogs, snakes, lizards and the eggs of ground-nesting birds. In late summer and autumn they eat many berries, fruit and seeds, and they scavenge carrion and human food waste. They find most food by smell, shuffling slowly with the nose close to the ground and digging quickly with the front claws when they detect a grub or a nest of mice.

Striped skunks are among the few predators that regularly eat bees and wasps. They scratch at the entrance of a hive or a ground nest at night and eat the insects that come out, apparently unbothered by stings to the face and thick fur. The seasonal details are in What do skunks eat?

The spray and warning display

Every skunk carries two scent glands beside the anus, each with a small nozzle that the skunk can aim. The oily, yellowish musk is made of sulfur compounds called thiols, which humans can smell at extremely low concentrations. A skunk can hit a target accurately at about 3 m (10 ft), and the smell can carry well over a kilometer downwind.

Spraying is a last resort. A threatened skunk first faces the intruder, arches its back, raises its tail, stamps its front feet, hisses and may make short false charges. Unlike its smaller cousins, the spotted skunks, the striped skunk rarely does a handstand before spraying. Only if the threat continues does it twist into a U shape, with head and rear both facing the enemy, and spray. The supply is limited, enough for several sprays, and takes days to refill. More in Why do skunks spray?

Behavior, dens and winter

Striped skunks are mostly nocturnal and solitary. They do not defend territories, and the home ranges of neighbors overlap widely, often covering a few square kilometers, and males roam more widely in the breeding season. Apart from mothers with young and shared winter dens, adults usually ignore each other. By day they rest in dens: old burrows of woodchucks, foxes or badgers, hollow logs, rock piles, brush piles or spaces under porches and sheds. They can dig their own burrows but often borrow others.

They do not truly hibernate. In the north, skunks spend much of the winter asleep in their dens, living on stored fat and lowering their body temperature in short bouts of torpor. Females often share winter dens, sometimes with a single male, which helps them save heat; males often den alone. On mild winter nights skunks may come out briefly to forage.

Reproduction, kits and lifespan

Mating takes place in late winter, usually from February to April, and males may travel widely in search of females. Pregnancy lasts about 59–77 days, including a short period of delayed implantation before the embryo starts to develop.

Kits are born in May or June in litters of usually four to seven, occasionally more. Newborns weigh only about 25–40 g (1–1.4 oz), are blind and have sparse fur, yet the black-and-white pattern already shows on their skin. Their eyes open at about three weeks, and they are weaned at six to seven weeks. Young skunks then follow their mother in single file on nightly foraging trips. Males leave in late summer, while some young females stay into the following spring. Both sexes can breed before their first birthday.

Most striped skunks die young: many do not survive their first year because of harsh winters, disease, predators and road traffic. Those that do typically live 2–3 years, and some reach about 7 years in the wild. In captivity they can live to about 10 years.

Predators and threats

Few predators risk a skunk’s spray. The main exception is the great horned owl, which hunts at night, strikes from above and has a poor sense of smell. Coyotes, foxes, bobcats, cougars, badgers and eagles take skunks occasionally, usually when other food is scarce. The full list is in What eats skunks?

Cars kill very large numbers of skunks, partly because of their poor eyesight and their habit of standing their ground. Disease is another major cause of death: striped skunks are one of the main wild carriers of rabies in North America, along with raccoons, bats and foxes, and they also suffer from distemper.

Conservation status

The striped skunk is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List, with a stable population. It is widespread, common and thrives in farmland and suburbs. Local populations rise and fall with disease outbreaks, but the species as a whole is not threatened.

Myths and facts about skunks

Myth: skunks are rodents or members of the weasel family. Skunks are carnivorans in their own family, the Mephitidae, separated from the weasel family on genetic evidence in the 1990s.

Myth: skunks spray whenever they are startled. Skunks give plenty of warning first and would rather walk away. Spraying uses up a supply that takes days to replace.

Myth: tomato juice removes skunk smell. It does not break down the thiols in the spray. People simply stop noticing the skunk odor after a while, which makes the tomato juice seem to work.

Skunks and people

Few wild mammals are as familiar to North Americans as the striped skunk, thanks partly to cartoon characters such as Pepé Le Pew and Flower in Bambi (1942). In the real world, skunks are common visitors to backyards, campgrounds and farms, and most encounters end peacefully if the skunk is given space.

A skunk that stamps its feet or raises its tail is asking to be left alone, and the best response is to back away slowly and quietly. Skunk spray in the eyes causes burning and temporary blindness, but it is not dangerous in the long term. The real health concern is rabies: a skunk that is active in daylight, staggers, seems unafraid or behaves aggressively may be sick. Never touch or handle a skunk, keep away from any that act oddly and report them to local wildlife authorities. If anyone is bitten or scratched, seek medical help immediately.

In the past, striped skunks were trapped in large numbers for their fur, sold under trade names such as “Alaska sable”. Today the fur trade in skunks is small.

Fact: skunks can be useful neighbors. By eating large numbers of beetle grubs, grasshoppers and other insects, as well as mice, skunks help keep these animals in check on farms and in gardens.