Tennessee’s striped skunk record, 584 sightings, stretches from Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Cherokee National Forest in the east across the state to Land Between the Lakes.
A grubber with a famous defense
The skunk is a nocturnal omnivore that earns its living by smell and digging, plowing up cone-shaped holes in turf and leaf litter for grubs, beetles, and worms, and taking mice, eggs, and berries as they come. Its other livelihood is deterrence. Before it sprays, it stamps and raises its tail, and the musk that follows can carry far enough to make the animal known without ever being seen. It dens in abandoned burrows, hollow logs, and spaces under buildings, which suits it to the settled counties of Knox, Davidson, and Rutherford that lead the record.
Summer is family season
Skunks breed in late winter, and the kits are born in early summer. Tennessee’s sightings crest in June, when the young begin following their mother in single file on her nightly rounds, and they stay elevated through early fall. Skunks do not truly hibernate, but they hole up in their dens through cold spells, and December is the quietest month in the record.
Status in Tennessee
NatureServe ranks the striped skunk S5, Secure, in Tennessee. The species is native throughout its Tennessee range, and USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state.
Full species profile
