The "Do Skunks Really Know What They Are Doing? Story

It was an ordinary day.  At times, conducting scientific research means trekking to remote locales, braving beasts or surviving hazardous weather.  And then again, you might find yourself gently combing the fur of several hundred dead skunks.  Oh, the things you might do for science!  A fellow by the name of Ted Stankowich, an evolutionary behavioral ecologist, studies aposematism, or warning colorations, like the bright colors that adorn coral snakes and poison dart frogs.  That's much like the jet-black fur and white racing stripes that run from head to tail on the North American striped skunk.  All use their colors to warn their predators.  But, some skunks might have only a small patch of white on their heads or bold white stripes that merge into a cape-like pattern.  All use their colors to warn their predators.  But, is this change in colors and patterns the best way to warn their predators?  You would think that the more consistant your signal, the more the predator gets one image in their heads and will avoid that nemesis.  At least, the skunk is armed with scent glands that can squirt sulfuric secretions into a predator's eyeballs, thus they have fewer natural predators than other similarly sized mammals.  The foes that they do have generally include mountain lions, coyotes, jaguars and bobcats, which are hungry enough to risk the spray or who pounce upon a skunk with markings that don't convey the threat posed.  It would be noted though that the great horned owl doesn't have a strong sense of smell and this might be the reason they take down more skunks than most other predators.  Mr. Stankowich and his colleagues have photographed 749 striped skunk skins in museums across the world and then compared them with other variables, such as the environments the animals and their potential predators inhabited. In the end, they verified a hunch. "In areas that have really strong predation risk, both from birds and mammals, you get a much more consistent traditional black animal with two long white stripes on the body," says Ted.  A behavioral ecologist at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland says that research on animal warning colors often focuses on small geographic areas or how specific predators interact with specific prey.  That's why he's impressed with the scope of the new study.  Since people have hunted or eliminated predators across the United States, from mountain lions to wolves, it's logical to ask if humans are to blame for skunks starting to look less like skunks.  Ted says that, "I don't want to go so far as to say that humans are the cause of this variation of totally blacks skunks by extricating predators.  But we certainly aren't helping."  The study seems to have found a link between less predators and skunk stripe variation, not causation.  Similarly, with museum specimens only representing skunks from the last hundred years, it's difficult to make any conclusions about long-term patterns.  "There's been a complex history of huge mega-predators in North America that are no longer here," says Ted.  "So it's hard to say what the predation landscape looked like thousands of years ago, and how it might have affected skunks now."  Perhaps we might want to stay away from them if we aren't sure!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.