If you ever see a skunk do a handstand in person, run! It’s not trying to be cute. It’s about to spray you with its deadly weapon.
A paper in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution shows that they were able to identify 7 species of skunks upon studying 203 specimens, and they all do handstand before they spray. This is contrary to popular belief that there were only 4 species of skunks.
“We expected to either validate the four species hypothesis or invalidate it and make it three, not actually expand it to seven,” says Adam Ferguson, an evolutionary ecologist at Chicago’s Field Museum and one of the paper’s coauthors.
Prior to the new study, researchers tended to differentiate spotted skunk species by looking at their morphology—things like differences in spotting patterns, as well as cranial and dental measurements. But those factors are so similar among some of the seven species that they were thought to be the same type of spotted skunk.
Image Credit: Jerry W. Dragoo / Smithsonian
Image Credit: Robby Heischman