We were fascinated in my third period class this week when one of the students came in with the tale of confiscating a relatively fresh skull from her dog. According to her, there was still some hair and tissue, but otherwise the thing was not very recognizable (although her dad thought it might be a cat!). All those police and detective novels I've read kicked right in, and after questioning her for a few more relevant details, I started googling images of small mammal skulls, but without any luck. It wasn't a cat, a squirrel, a possum, a raccoon, or a puppy (thank goodness...). It was always the eye size that was wrong-- whatever it was, it had pretty tiny eyes. When the bell rang for lunch, I sighed and gave up.
Fortunately, she brought a cell phone photo in today, and before I ever got to see the picture, one of the other kids recognized it as a skunk. We searched again for an image to confirm his hypothesis, but it was never 100%. There was too much gore on the one in her picture to make a positive identification. LAter, though, I did some more research and found that skunks do indeed have very small eyes. They rely on their hearing and smelling more than sight.
Coincidentally, I heard a story on the radio this morning about why mammals have such big brains, especially compared to reptiles. Millions of years ago, dinosaurs were hunting in the day, so anything that could hunt at night had an advantage, because it wasn't prey or competition to the dinosaurs. The theory goes that mammals developed a strong sense of smell to help them hunt in the dark, and that the sense of smell takes up more brain space, so their brains grew to be larger and larger. Later, some mammals evolved into daytime predators, and they have larger eyes, but not the skunk. Good job, Skunk!
Life Lesson: Do what you're good at.
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