Pooh!

Ah, the pleasing perfume of fragrant flowers is something to savour; but don’t go sniffing at the corpse flower – unless you enjoy the smell of rotting flesh that is!  This mysterious plant only flowers once every 7 years and when it does, it goes to the lengths of creating an utterly offensive aroma to attract all manner of carnivorous insects – they are unwittingly attracted to the flower, thinking there is a meal in the offing.  Searching for their grub, they wander all over the plant, unknowingly pollinating it, before taking off in disgust at the lack of dinner.  Whilst its fruits might look sweet and tasty, they are, in fact, poisonous; only Hornbills seem to be able to eat them without any ill effects, hopefully going on to spread the seed of this rare flora.

When it comes to creating a pong, skunks or even polecats might come to mind, and the stinkiest of the family has got to be the zorilla.  These critters might be small, but they definitely aren’t going to be overlooked – they’ve got quite an attitude – so beware!  They’re solitary and very territorial – so don’t go bothering them or you risk getting blinded (literally!) by their obnoxious smelling spray, that they squirt into your eyes from their ‘stink’ glands at their rear ends – they’ll definitely get up your nose!

You know how it is when you’ve eaten something that didn’t quite agree with you – the results can be somewhat embarrassing – that’s a problem that the hoatzin aka stink bird has.  It only eats leaves – whilst that doesn’t sound too smelly – these veggies are unfortunately very difficult to digest and the hoatzin has to ferment the chewed-up foliage in its crop for up to 2 days – the result is that its breath smells like cow manure – someone needs to tell it that it has a serious halitosis issue!

From stink birds to stink bugs – these unpleasantly perfumed pests like nothing better than a smoothy!  They suck the juice out of fruits like apples and grapes, lapping up all that lovely liquid and leaving a brown stain behind.  If they feel threatened, the produce an acrid secretion from their thorax, which they then spread out over their shells to quickly evaporate and invade the air with a nasty odour.  These speedy breeders feel the cold and will look to cuddle up with you in winter by visiting your homestead – but whatever you do, don’t go squishing them, or you’ll be sorry…

You might think you’d be safe from pongy perfumes underwater – but you’d clearly not bargained to come across a sea hare.  This strange looking mollusc will waft a wiffy substance in the direction of anything that might annoy it.  Its puff of pongy perfume irritates any would-be predators and if that doesn’t put off the keen diners,  it’s covering of stinky secretion means one try and they won’t buy!

Now boys, if you’re getting ready for a big date, do you like to put on a little dab or two of expensive aftershave?  Well, the musk ox certainly knows how to splash it all over!  When it comes to the mating season, these guys like to raid the perfume counter and go big and bold.  They produce a reeky liquid from glands by their eyes, which they proceed to spread all over themselves.  They think this makes them irresistible to the ladies – lovely if you like that stale sweat smell….

Now surely snakes don’t need to use stinky smells to defend themselves – they have poisonous fangs, or inescapably crushing grips, to send you running for the hills, right?  Well, the king rat snake likes to be doubly sure so, as well as the usual serpentine weaponry, it has another trick up its sleeve – it’s reeky too.  It can make a fetid fragrance from glands by its tail and despite its impressive size, if anything dares to bother it, it won’t hesitate to put out a pong to put them off!

Seems these guys really know how to kick up a stink!