Monster Monday: Skunk Ape Habitats
The skunk ape is said mainly to inhabit the Everglades, but sightings of the cryptid range throughout the backwater swamps of Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Arkansas. Researchers believe that skunk apes spend a considerable amount of time underground in caverns and alligator caves. The rotting organic matter present in these subterranean areas could be responsible for their foul odor; although there is speculation that body odor and poor personal hygiene could play a role, too.
Southern swamps hold myriad potential food sources for skunk apes, and it is believed that they may subsist on an omnivorous diet--feeding on flightless nestlings, fish, deer, wild hog, giant leather fern, cabbage palm, pond apple, acorn, and hog plum. The broad area of their sightings could be due to the nomadic lifestyle of a primitive hunter/gatherer society, as some investigators believe, and while most sightings of skunk apes involve individual creatures, there have been eyewitnesses who claim to have seen them in pairs or small groups.
Most skunk ape sightings occur where civilization meets the wilderness, although it is unclear if the cryptids are drawn to these places in particular, or if it is simply a matter of humans being there to see them in the first place.