The handstand is a distinct behaviour of the genus Spilogale and is not performed by striped skunks. The animal rushes forward, stamps, then throws its hind legs up and walks a short distance on its forefeet with the tail fanned out. Face-on, this roughly doubles the apparent size of an animal that typically weighs under a kilogram, and it aims the anal glands at the intruder while keeping the skunk's eyes on it.
As with other skunks, the display is preferred to the spray. Discharge is metabolically costly and limited in supply, and the black-and-white pattern is a standing advertisement that makes the warning credible to predators that have learned it.
Eastern spotted skunk numbers fell sharply through the middle of the twentieth century across much of the American Midwest and South, and the species is now assessed as Vulnerable. Proposed causes include changes in farming practice, loss of brushy cover, pesticide use and disease, but no single explanation has been established, and the decline predates good monitoring, which makes the record hard to reconstruct.