If you prefer a second-hand demonstration to first-hand research (which most folks would), you can go to YouTube and search the terms skunk and dog. You’ll see a number of videos of dogs going after skunks. It takes a good bit of harassment for the dogs to get sprayed.
In my limited experience, skunks are a lot like opossums, raccoons and coyotes in that they’ve gotten very used to living around people, and hardly think twice about us any more.
If I take a walk around the block and I see a raccoon eating from a garbage can he’s just knocked over, the raccoon will look at me, think “Oh, it’s just a PERSON,” and go back to eating.
If I walk into my backyard at night and see a possum, it will glance at me briefly and then go right back to what it’s doing. Same with armadillos, or even deer. Animals that have adjusted to life in the suburbs just don’t fear people much.
So, a skunk that sees me passing by will barely even look up at me. He isn’t afraid of me in the least. And why WOULD he be?
But… ALL those animals are still afraid of dogs. Raccoons and possums that didn’t find me the least bit intimidating would run for the nearest tree or storm drain if my little terrier would yap at them.
Skunks fear dogs and, to a lesser degree, cats far more than they fear people. Hence, your dog or cat is in MUCH greater danger of getting sprayed than you are.
I’m sure skunks spray for defensive reasons. My experience, though limited, is that skunks first try to run away. If it’s being chased by a faster animal, or feels cornered, or for any other reason feels endangered, it will spray. Pretty much the same as a person with a can of pepper spray.
I’m also sure it varies skunk by skunk, so a conclusive study would have to be conducted with many skunks, and many forms of provocation, under varying conditions, with human test subjects with varying physical characteristics. At a minimum, each human should attempt to provoke a set of skunks collected from the same area for genetic similarity, and compare the results to the same provocations applied to sets collected from other areas. The provocations should include loud noises (yelling insults about the skunks lineage for example), physical contact (at least a tail yank), chasing in an open space, and chasing in a constricted space which results in cornering the skunk. The humans should also dress in the manner in which skunks are likely to come across them in the wild, camo, LL Bean merchandise, and men wearing funny fishing hats.
That knowledge fails the skunk completely on roadways.
Using their mom and combat boots in the same sentence will for sure get you sprayed.
I sit on the deck some mornings and regularly see a mother skunk and two smaller ones, I assume her babies, ambling across the lawn. They stop and give me ‘the look’ and then continue on their way. I don’t bother them and they don’t bother me. And I see a skunk on the deck snarfing up any loose birdseed, late at night. I turn on the light and it scurries (well, waddles) away down the deck steps. So, maybe I’m playing with fire, but so far all is well here as far as skunks go. I’m sure they would spray around the house if there were dogs and cats out in the yard, though. Never thought to go out and provoke one to see what it took to get sprayed.
I believe that Louden Wainright has some important words to say on this.
The accepted number in the scientific community is 6.5 (+/- 0.3) on the Henville provocation scale.
Buy it a drink next time.
There’s a summer camp I’ve been to near Emlenton PA where the advice is, if you’re walking through the woods and see a skunk, A) don’t mess with it but also B) don’t freak out, because it probably won’t consider you a threat. The third-hand anecdote is that one year, one of the campers tripped over a skunk - and it didn’t spray.
On the other hand, we had this one dog that got skunked twice in her lifetime - once a few hours before the start of my little sister’s birthday party. Aigh what a mess.
I did wildlife rehab years ago. Most of the skunks we got were babies and weren’t going to spray or so badly injured they couldn’t muster up the energy to do it. Once they were well enough to spray, they were released. One those rare occasions when you had to handle an adult skunk, you learned how to hold them properly. All you had to do was just hold the tail down and put it between their back legs. This would close the opening of the gland and they couldn’t spray. IIRC, this may have been one reason why the skunk in the trap the Mythbusters used didn’t spray. It wasn’t able to fully raise its tail to spray. I don’t remember if they tested a skunk out of a trap and those results.
When we got babies, I thought they were the cutest, softest fluffiest little things. It was cute to see them grow up. (We were a minimal contact clinic. You fed them and medicated them, if necessary. No cuddling, these animals were supposed to stay wild.) All of the babies would get to a point in their development where the independent/wild gene would kick in. In skunks, this was when they started “dancing” to get you to go away. They would stamp their front feet and do handstands. We usually just hurried up and cleaned the cage and fed them. No one ever got sprayed.