Skunk spray made Algonquian word into an English insult
Skunks are New World mephitids famous for anal-gland spray and bold warning colors from black-and-white to cream or ginger. Closer to Old World stink badgers than to weasels, they entered English in the 1630s from a southern New England Algonquian squunck rooted in words for urinate and fox.
A skunk's spray is a blend of foul-smelling organosulfur compounds, fired by muscles beside the scent glands with enough accuracy to hit a target up to 3 metres away. It can sting the eyes, even blind an attacker briefly, and can be smelled up to 5.6 kilometres downwind. Bears back off, and Charles Darwin wrote that a few drops made a dog violently sick and ruined anything they touched. Every species advertises the weapon with stripes or spots from birth.
The family Mephitidae is confined to the Americas, and its nearest relatives are the Old World stink badgers rather than weasels or polecats. Spotted skunks can weigh under half a kilogram, while hog-nosed skunks reach about 6.4 kilograms. Striped skunks live from southern Canada to northern Mexico, spotted skunks reach south to Costa Rica, and hog-nosed skunks range through both continents. The English word came in the 1630s from an Algonquian term built from roots meaning urinate and fox, and a Jesuit writer in 1634 admired the animal's shining fur while calling it a symbol of sin.
Skunks are solitary and active at dawn and dusk, sheltering by day in burrows dug with long front claws. They see poorly beyond about 3 metres, which makes cars a major danger. They do not truly hibernate, but in winter up to a dozen females may share a den. Their diet shifts with the seasons, from beetles, grasshoppers and bees in summer to rodents, amphibians and birds' eggs in winter, and they also raid beehives, scratching at the entrance and eating the guards that come out, a trick mothers teach their young.
After a gestation of about 66 days, females bear four to six blind kits in May or June and raise them alone for about a year.
Source: Skunk
