Striped Polecat

It is very frequently given that title, and while smelliness is difficult to measure objectively, the striped polecat's defensive spray is widely regarded by naturalists as at least as overpowering as, and often worse than, that of a North American skunk. The secretion, released from anal glands beneath the tail when the animal is seriously threatened, is a pungent, oily fluid that clings to surfaces and lingers for a long time, and people have reported being able to smell a striped polecat that sprayed from several hundred metres away downwind, so its reputation as one of the foulest-smelling animals is well earned even if a precise ranking is impossible.

Despite looking almost exactly like a skunk, with bold black-and-white lengthwise stripes and a bushy tail, and despite using an almost identical chemical spray defence, the striped polecat is not a skunk at all. It belongs to the family Mustelidae, the weasel family, alongside weasels, otters, badgers, and wolverines, while true skunks are placed in their own separate family, Mephitidae. The close resemblance between the two is a textbook case of convergent evolution, where unrelated animals independently arrive at the same solution, in this case a warning colour pattern paired with a foul spray, because it works so well as a defence.

Spraying is a last resort, partly because producing and replenishing the secretion takes energy and time. When first confronted by a predator or other threat, the striped polecat performs an escalating threat display, arching its back, erecting the fur along its body and tail to appear larger, raising and sometimes curling its tail forward over its back, exposing its teeth, and giving loud screams or growls. Many predators back off at this stage, having either learned from a previous encounter or being instinctively wary of the bold black-and-white pattern, and only if this bluff fails does the polecat turn and release its spray toward the attacker's face.

It is a nocturnal carnivore with a varied diet of insects, rodents, other small mammals, birds and their eggs, and small reptiles, which it hunts largely by scent and hearing as it forages across open grassland and savanna at night. It kills vertebrate prey with a precise, powerful bite to the base of the skull or neck, a technique shared with many other members of the weasel family, and it is an effective digger, using its strong claws to excavate prey such as burrowing rodents and insect larvae, as well as to create the daytime shelters where it sleeps.