Donkey
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| Donkey | ||||||||||||||||
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| Equus asinus Linnaeus, 1758 |
The donkey or ass, Equus asinus, is a domesticated animal of the horse family, Equidae.
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[edit] Traits
Most wild donkeys are between 1 and 1.60 m in length. Domestic donkeys stand from 0.9 to over 1.40 m tall. The Andalucian-Cordobesan breed of southern Spain can reach up to 1.60 m high. Donkeys are adapted to marginal desert lands, and have many traits that are unique to the species as a result. They need less food than horses. Overfed donkeys can suffer from a disease called laminitis. Unlike horse fur, donkey fur is not waterproof, and so they must have shelter when it rains. Wild donkeys live separated from each other, unlike tight wild horse herds. Donkeys have developed very loud voices, which can be heard for over three kilometers, to keep in contact with other donkeys of their herd over the wide spaces of the desert. Donkeys have larger ears than horses to hear the distant calls of fellow donkeys, and to help cool the donkey's blood. Donkeys' tough digestive system can break down inedible vegetation and extract moisture from food more efficiently. Donkeys can defend themselves with a powerful kick of their hind legs.
[edit] Etymology
The word donkey is one of the most etymologically obscure in the English language.[citation needed] Until quite recent times, the standard word was ass e.g. jack ass, which has clear cognates in most other Indo-European languages. No credible cognate for donkey has yet been identified, though it is possible that it is a diminutive of dun (dull greyish-brown), a typical donkey colour.
[edit] History
The ancestors of the modern donkey are the Nubian[1] (a medium sized donkey with a grey and white coat, stripes on back and legs and a tall, upright mane with a black tip) and Somalian subspecies of African wild ass[2]. The African Wild Ass was domesticated around 4,000 B.C. The donkey became an important pack animal for people living in the Egyptian and Nubian regions as they can easily carry 20% to 30% of their own body weight and can also be used as a farming and dairy animal. By 1800 B.C., the ass had reached the Middle East where the trading city of Damascus was referred to as the “City of Asses” in cuneiform texts. Syria produced at least three breeds of donkeys, including a saddle breed with a graceful, easy gait. These were favored by women.
For the Greeks, the donkey was associated with the Syrian god of wine, Dionysus. In fact, the Disney film Fantasia (1940) features a Dionysian character on a donkey. The Romans also valued the ass and would use it as a sacrificial animal.
In 1495, the ass first appeared in the New World. The four males and two females brought by Christopher Columbus gave birth to the mules which the Conquistadors rode as they explored the Americas. Shortly after America won her independence, President George Washington imported the first mammoth jackstock into the country. Because the Jack donkeys in the New World lacked the size and strength he required to produce quality work mules, he imported donkeys from Spain and France, some standing over 1,63 m tall. One of the donkeys Washington received from the Marquis de Lafayette named “Knight of Malta" stood only 1,43 m and was regarded as a great disappointment. Viewing this donkey as unfit for producing mules, Washington instead bred The Knight to his Jennets and, in doing so, created an American line of Mammoth Jackstock.
Despite these early appearances of donkeys in America, the donkey did not find widespread favor in America until the miners and gold prospectors of the 1800s. Miners preferred this animal due to its ability to carry tools, supplies, and ore. Their sociable disposition and fondness for human companionship allowed the miners to lead their donkeys without ropes. They simply followed behind their master. With the introduction of the steam train, these donkeys lost their jobs and many were turned loose into the American deserts. Descendants of these donkeys can still be seen roaming the Southwest in herds to this day.
By the early Twentieth Century, the donkeys began to be kept as pets in the United States and other wealthier nations, while remaining an important work animal in many poorer nations. The donkey as a pet is best portrayed by the appearance of the miniature donkey in 1929. Robert Green imported miniature donkeys to the United States and was a lifetime advocate of the breed. Mr. Green is perhaps best quoted when he said “Miniature Donkeys possess the affectionate nature of a Newfoundland, the resignation of a cow, the durability of a mule, the courage of a tiger, and the intellectual capability only slightly inferior to man's.” Standing only 32-40 inches, many families recognized the potential of miniature donkeys as pets and companions for their children.
Although the donkey fell from public notice and became viewed as a comical, stubborn beast which was considered “cute” at best, the donkey has recently regained some popularity in North America as a mount, for pulling wagons, and even as a guard animal. Some standard species are ideal for guarding herds of sheep against predators since most donkeys have a natural aversion to canines and will keep them away from the herd.
[edit] Economic use
Donkeys have a reputation for stubbornness, but this is due to some handlers' misinterpretation of their highly-developed sense of self-preservation. It is difficult to force or frighten a donkey into doing something it sees as contrary to its own best interest, as opposed to horses who are much more willing to, for example, go along a path with unsafe footing.
Although formal studies of their behaviour and cognition are rather limited, donkeys appear to be quite intelligent, cautious, friendly, playful, and eager to learn. They are many times fielded with horses due to a perceived calming effect on nervous horses. If a donkey is introduced to a mare and foal, the foal will often turn to the donkey for support after it has left its mother.[3]
Once a person has earned their confidence they can be willing and companionable partners and very dependable in work. For this reason, they are now commonly kept as pets in countries where their use as beasts of burden has disappeared. They are also popular for giving rides to children in holiday resorts or other leisure contexts.
[edit] Present status
There are about 44 million donkeys today. China has the most with 11 million, followed by Ethiopia and Mexico. Some researchers think the real number is higher since many donkeys go uncounted.
The vast majority of donkeys are used for the same types of work that they have been doing for 6000 years. Their most common role is for transport, whether riding, pack transport, or pulling carts. They may also be used for farm tillage, threshing, raising water, milling, and other jobs. Other donkeys are used to sire mules, as companions for horses, to guard sheep, and as pets. A few are milked or raised for meat (Starkey 1997).
The number of donkeys in the world continues to grow, as it has steadily throughout most of history. Some factors that today are contributing to this are increasing human population, progress in economic development and social stability in some poorer nations, conversion of forests to farm and range land, rising prices of motor vehicles and gasoline, and the donkeys' popularity as pets (Starkey 1997, Blench 2000).
In prosperous countries, the welfare of donkeys both at home and abroad has recently become a concern and a number of sanctuaries for retired and rescued donkeys have been set up. The largest is the Donkey Sanctuary of England, which also supports donkey welfare projects in Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, and Mexico (DS 2006).
[edit] Donkeys in warfare
According to British food writer Matthew Fort, donkeys were until recently used in the Italian army. The Mountain Fusiliers each had a donkey to carry their gear (see pack animal) and in extremes, the animal could be eaten (see horse meat).[4]
[edit] Types of donkeys
[edit] Domestic donkey breeds
An incomplete list of domestic donkey breeds includes the:
- Mammoth Donkey
- Poitou Donkey
- American Spotted Donkey
- Cypriot Donkey
The Poitou Donkey breed was developed in France for the sole purpose of producing mules. It is a large donkey breed with a very long shaggy coat and no dorsal stripe.
[edit] Burro
The Spanish brought donkeys, called "burros" in Spanish, to North America beginning in the late fifteenth century. They were prized for their hardiness in arid country and became the beast of burden of choice by early prospectors in the Southwest United States. In the western United States the word "burro" is used as often as the word "donkey" by English speakers. Sometimes the distinction is made with donkeys descended from Mexican stock called "burros" and those from stock imported directly from Europe called "donkeys".
The wild burros (or more accurately, feral burros) on the western rangelands descend from animals that ran away, were abandoned, or were freed. Wild burros in the United States were protected by Public Law 92-195, The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. These animals, considered to be a living legacy, have lately been at risk due to drought. The Bureau of Land Management conducts round-ups of endangered herds, and holds public auctions.
Wild burros make good pets when treated well and cared for properly. They are clever and curious. When trust has been established, they appreciate, and even seek, attention and grooming.
[edit] Donkey hybrids
A male donkey (jack) can be crossed with a female horse to produce a mule. A male horse can be crossed with a female donkey (jennet or jenny) to produce a hinny. This is North American nomenclature; in the United Kingdom, the word hinny is not used. A female donkey in the UK is called a mare, or jenny and the word jennet is more commonly applied to the offspring of a female donkey and a male horse, regardless of whether the foal is female or male.
Horse-donkey hybrids are almost always sterile because horses have 64 chromosomes whereas donkeys have 62, producing offspring with 63 chromosomes. Due to different mating behavior, jacks are often more willing to cover mares than stallions are to breed jennets. Mules are much more common than hinnies. This is believed to be caused by two factors, the first being proven in cat hybrids, that when the chromosome count of the male is the higher, fertility rates drop (as in the case of stallion x jennet). The lower progesterone production of the jennet may also lead to early embryonic loss. Although it is commonly believed that mules are more easily handled and also physically stronger than hinnies, making them more desirable for breeders to produce, it is simply that mules are more common in total number.
The offspring of a zebra-donkey cross is called a zonkey, zebroid, zebrass, or zedonk;[5] zebra mule is an outdated term. The foregoing terms generally refer to hybrids produced by breeding a male zebra to a female donkey. Zebra hinny, zebret and zebrinny all refer to the cross of a female zebra with a male donkey. Zebrinnies are rarer than zedonkies because female zebras in captivity are most valuable when used to produce full-blooded zebras.[6] There are not enough female zebras breeding in captivity to spare them for hybridizing; there is no such limitation on the number of female donkeys breeding.
For at least the past century, a few donkeys and burros in Mexico have been painted with white stripes to amuse tourists. These are not hybrids.
An animal which may look like a zebra-donkey hybrid because of its distinctly striped hindquarters and hind legs is the okapi, which has no relationship to either of those species. Okapi are most closely related to the giraffe. In addition to the rear stripes, okapi have some striping near the top of their forelegs.
[edit] Wild Ass, Onager, and Kiang
With domestication of almost all donkeys, few species now exist in the wild. Some of them are the African Wild Ass (Equus africanus) and its subspecies Somalian Wild Ass (Equus africanus somaliensis). The Asiatic wild ass or Onager, Equus hemionus, and its relative the Kiang, Equus kiang, are closely related wild species.
There was another extinct subspecies called the Yukon Wild Ass (Equus asinus lambei). In the wild the asses can reach top speeds equalling zebras and even most horses.
[edit] Cultural references
The long history of human use of donkeys means that there is a rich store of cultural references to them.
[edit] Religion and myth
- The ass may have been the symbol of the Egyptian god, Seth
- Several were buried in Hor-Aha's tomb
- The ass was a symbol of the Greek god Dionysus, particularly in relationship to his companion, Silenus.
- Greek mythology includes the story of King Midas who judged against Apollo in favor of Pan during a musical contest, and had his ears changed to those of a donkey as punishment.
- There are numerous references to the donkey ("hamor" or "chamor" חמור) in the Hebrew Bible, (Old Testament). It mostly appears reflecting the natural environment of Israel and as an aspect of the agricultural economy. Ownership of many donkeys is a sign of God’s blessing. The Bible often specifies if a person rode donkeys, since this was used to indicate a person’s wealth in much the same way luxury cars do today. (Horses at that time were used solely for war, powerful kings such as Solomon being the only ones who could afford to import them from Egypt.)
- In Genesis the King of Shechem (the modern Nablus), killed by Jacob's sons, is called "Hamor" - showing that at the time this animal was held in high enough esteem that it was no disrespect for royalty to use its name as their first name. (See Dinah, Shechem, Animal names as first names in Hebrew).
- In Numbers 22:22-41 "The Lord opened the mouth of the donkey" (vs. 28) and it speaks to Balaam. In Judges 15:13-17 where the hero Samson slays Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Additional references can be found in Deuteronomy 22:10, Job 11:12, Proverbs 26:3 and elsewhere.
- The most common Greek word for ass appears roughly 100 times in the Biblical text. In the Gospels, Jesus rides a donkey into Jerusalem (Mark 11:1 in which colt refers to a donkey colt).
- Traditionally, Mary is portrayed as riding a donkey while pregnant. Legend has it that the cross on the donkey’s shoulders comes from the shadow of Christ’s crucifixion, placing the donkey at the foot of the cross. It was once believed that hair cut from this cross and hung from a child’s neck in a bag would prevent fits and convulsions.
- In both Jewish and Christian traditions, the messiah (Jesus Christ in the later case) was often described as riding on a donkey. As noted, in the context of the Hebrew Bible this connoted wealth and affluence befitting the House of David, as at the time commoners are described as simply going on foot. However, in later times when the aristocracy used horses, depicting the messiah as riding a donkey came to have an opposite connotation, as indicating a simple, sober way of life and avoiding luxury. The same connotation is evident in the description of saints such as Francis of Assisi as riding donkeys.
- In contemporary Israel, the term "Messiah's Donkey" (Chamoro Shel Mashiach חמורו של משיח) stands at the center of a controversial religious-political doctrine, attributed to Rabbi Avraham Yitchak Hacohen Cook, under which it was the Heavenly-imposed "task" of secular Zionists to build up a Jewish State, but once the state is established they are fated to give place to the Religious who are ordained to lead the state. The secularists in this analogy are "The Donkey" while the religious who are fated to supplant them are a collective "Messiach". A book on the subject, published in 1998 by the militant secularist Sefi Rechlevsky, aroused a major controversy in the Israeli public opinion.[7]
- Muhammad, the prophet of Islam said that dogs and donkeys - if they pass in front of men in prayer - they will void or nullify that prayer.[8] He also said that "when you hear the braying of donkeys, seek Refuge with Allah from Satan for (their braying indicates) that they have seen a devil."[9]
[edit] Fable and folklore
- European folklore also claims that the tail of a donkey can be used to combat whooping cough or scorpion stings.
- An Indian tale has an ass dressed in a panther skin gave himself away by braying.
- One of Aesop's fables has an ass dressed in a lion skin who gives himself away by braying.
[edit] Literature
- In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the character Bottom has his head turned into that of a donkey by Oberon, king of the fairies.
- In Don Quixote, Sancho Panza rides a donkey named Rucio.
- Eeyore, the gloomy donkey from A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh books.
- Benjamin, the skeptical donkey from George Orwell's Animal Farm.
- Puzzle in CS Lewis's The Last Battle
- Platero in Juan Ramon Jimenez's Platero and I
[edit] Film
- Donkey is the name of a fictional donkey (voiced by Eddie Murphy) in the animated movies Shrek, Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third, all from DreamWorks Pictures.
- A donkey is the central character of the film Au hasard Balthazar by Robert Bresson.
[edit] Proverb and idiom
- A German proverb claims a donkey can wear a lion suit but its ear will still stick out and give it away.
- English proverbs include "better be the head of an ass than the tail of a horse", "if an ass goes a-traveling, he'll not come back a horse", and "better ride on an ass that carries me home than a horse that throws me" (though all these are now obsolete).
- Classical Greek expressions about donkeys included: onos pros eortēn = "a donkey at the festival" (gets all the work); onos hyetai = "a donkey is rained on" (i.e. he is unaffected or insensitive), onos pros phatnēn = "a donkey at a feed trough" (like the English expression "in clover").
- British colloquial expressions also include "donkey's year" what means for a long time or for many years, "to talk the hind leg off a donkey" means to tire somebody with one's talk.
[edit] Pub names
- The Jack and Jenny is a common pub-name in Britain.
[edit] Insult and vulgarity
- The donkey has long been a symbol of ignorance. Examples can be found in Aesop's Fables, Apuleius's The Golden Ass (The Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius) and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
- Because of its connection with ignorance, in modern slang, referring to someone as a dumbass means that they are unintelligent. Many people would find this term vulgar and rude.
- In contrast, to refer to someone as a jackass in modern slang provides a connotation of being obnoxious, rude, and thoughtless, with or without the added connotation of stupidity. This usage is also considered vulgar. A less vulgar substitute is donkey itself.
- The unmodified word ass has entered common use in the English language as a term used to describe a person who resembles a donkey in some way, such as appearance, stubbornness, foolishness, etc.
- In football, especially in the United Kingdom, a player who is considered unskilful, and to rely overly on his physical attributes to cover up his technical shortcomings, is often dubbed a "donkey."
- Term for bad poker players that play hands when the odds are against them. "Wayne is such a donkey, he put all his chips in drawing dead," or "Songman is such a donkey, calling my all-in with a runner-runner flush draw" (also sometimes referred to as a fish)
- In the Middle East, حمار (ḥomar), meaning "donkey", is a derogatory term that refers to someone of very limited intelligence. Another usage is حمار شغل (ḥomar shuġl, literally "work donkey"), which means a very heavy worker, usually in routine non-creative work; for example, someone might say, "Give that job to Ali, he's a work donkey anyway and he won't mind."
[edit] Politics
- In an election under a preferential voting system, a vote that simply writes down preferences in the order of the candidates (1 at the top, then 2, and so on) is called a donkey vote.
- The donkey is also the symbol for the Democratic Party of the United States, originating in a cartoon by Thomas Nast of Harper's Weekly (Nast also originated the elephant as the symbol of the Republican Party (United States).
[edit] Donkey trivia
- Donkeys are sometimes claimed to be resistant to botulinum toxin.[10]