Making a STINK about safety?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Skunks have a bold way to ward off predators: they SMELL! If a predator doesn’t take the hint from their warning stripes, they get sprayed! Does that mean certain stripe patterns are better at scaring off attackers?
Hannah Walker from California State University, Long Beach and team think so! But what makes the difference?
They looked at over seven-hundred skunks from museums across the country. They used image processing software to track differences in stripe shape, size, and symmetry among individuals. They compared differences by location, danger posed by predators, and other environmental features.
Results?
Turns out, fur pattern is less variable in skunk populations with more predators! There, skunks have roughly thirty percent more consistent stripes, and fifteen percent more consistent white coloring. And, the skunks were lighter in dark habitats, and darker in bright habitats.
Maybe then they don’t have to raise a stink!
Reference: Walker, H., Caro, T., Bell, D., Ferguson, A., & Stankowich, T. (2023). Predation risk drives aposematic signal conformity. Evolution, 77(11), 2492–2503. https://doi.org/10.1093/evolut/qpad162