This seems like it could end badly.
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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Pepé Le Pew?
Aside from their defense response, are skunks generally chill animals? I never thought about it but I wonder how well they get along with humans if domesticated (or at least, raised in captivity).
Some people do keep them as pets (with their smell-producing glands removed)
I met the sweetest skunk ever at a city Halloween event.
Anytime I see one it is just bopping around yards at 2 AM and seems pretty chill unless a loud noise spooks it and it vanishes. I wouldnt want to accidentally corner one near a fence though, Ive heard they are liberal with their spray
In my experience they're generally pretty shy, they're chill as long as nobody makes any sudden moves.
I had one walk into my house, check out my bedroom closet and leave, all while I was moving in some furniture one evening
You can get the spray glands surgically removed and after that they're somewhere between a cat and a ferret. I've always wanted one, but they're illegal here on account of being scavengers.
Better check your vaccine card
Spiking the food with oral vaccines
I can tell that you like to party
Everybody! "Smelly cat, smelly cat, what are they feeding you?"
It's not your fauuult!
2/3 of these animals aren't in my country so I don't know about the logistics but this seems really cool!
Racoons are smart and will get into anything. They frequently figure out lids and containers.
Skunks are cool, but if they spray, your whole neighborhood is going to stink for a while.
What does it smell like?
From a distance? Really good weed.
Up close and personal? I can't even begin to describe it. It's not even so much a smell as it feels like acid burning your nostrils and eyes and simultaneously stomach churning so you want to gag or vomit until it is cleaned off. I would rather fall face first in a fresh cow pie than be sprayed by a skunk again.
Wow that's quite the bioweapon!
Quite literally. Human and other mammal scent receptors are very sensitive to thiols, sulfur compounds that are frequently found in sources of danger, like rotting corpses, feces, and toxic gas. Skunks evolved their spray to take advantage of this with high concentrations of thiols and compounds that help to adhere to things. It's like an olfactory flashbang.
That's so fascinating. Thanks for the specifics!
My husky got sprayed once on a late night walk. She was so confused -- she just wanted to be friends!
She got two jets: one in the facial area and another on her rump. The stuff near her face came out relatively quickly (think a timeline of months), whereas the spray on her butt really got the chance to soak in to her double coat. It would still smell ~5 years later if she got wet, just absurd staying power.
It did eventually fade or, at the very least, became less distinguishable from the general smell of wet dog
So you take a bad beer that's been sitting in the sun for a few months. You know that smell?
Ramp that up a few orders of magnitude to the extent that it seizes up your breathing and makes your eyes tear up to the point of near blindness.
Thanks. That was not what I was expecting; for some reason I was basing my imaginary skunk smell on the smell of rotten fish.
Closer to rotten egg than fish but not quite. It's caused by sulfur compounds similar to those in weed and bad beer as suggested (or beer that's bottled in clear or green glass and left in the sun - brown and cobalt glass block the UV that causes the compounds to form) but there's a wider "pallette" of odors in much higher concentration.
This is so neat! Skunk smell is such an iconic, well known, horrendous animal smell in North America. I've never considered someone would not know what it smells like!
Yeah it's not really something you export, so I can't sample it ha ha. Even now that everyone's telling me it's still just an imaginary smell to me.
I remember seeing a youtube comment saying "skunks are like cats that constantly point a gun at you"
Cats have knives anyways
Hello yes I am very much a cat
Because I know now.. I'm posting the link, still think the club is cool
Foxes are dogs
That's so cool!