50 Fun Facts About Donkey

What is an adult male donkey called?

A female is a jenny or jennet, and a youngster of either sex is a foal.

Which animal is the direct ancestor of the domestic donkey?

Its scientific name is either Equus africanus asinus or simply Equus asinus, depending on the taxonomist.

On which continent was the donkey first domesticated?

Pastoral people in Nubia probably tamed it 5,000 to 7,000 years ago, and it replaced the ox as their pack animal.

A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and what?

The reverse cross, a stallion with a jenny, produces the rarer hinny.

What is the offspring of a male horse and a female donkey called?

Hinnies are usually smaller than mules, with shorter ears and a tasselled tail like their donkey mother.

How many chromosomes does a donkey have?

A horse has 64, so their mule offspring get an odd 63 and are almost always infertile.

Roughly how long is a jenny's pregnancy?

Twins occur in under two percent of donkey pregnancies, and both survive in only about one case in seven.

Roughly how far can a donkey's bray be heard?

A bray typically lasts twenty seconds and helps solitary desert donkeys keep in touch.

What distinctive marking do most donkeys carry on their backs?

It is formed by primitive dorsal and shoulder stripes inherited from the wild ass.

Which country had the most donkeys in the world in 2006, with about 11 million?

By 2017 its herd had crashed to around 3 million as demand for donkey-hide gelatin soared.

Ejiao, the Chinese medicine that fuelled a 2010s global donkey trade, is boiled from which body part?

It could fetch up to $388 per kilogram in 2017, and several African nations banned exports of donkey products to China.

The world's largest donkey charity, The Donkey Sanctuary, is based near which English town?

Elisabeth Svendsen founded it in 1969 and it now cares for more than 4,000 animals.

The first donkeys in the Americas arrived on whose second voyage, landing at Hispaniola in 1495?

They may not have reached what is now the United States until Juan de Oñate crossed the Rio Grande in 1598.

Which name is used in the United States for the feral donkeys living west of the Rocky Mountains?

The word is simply Spanish and Portuguese for donkey; moke, cuddy and neddy are old British dialect words for the animal.

Which country holds roughly 5 million feral donkeys, officially classed as a pest?

They were imported as pack animals in 1866 and had multiplied enough to be declared pests in Western Australia by 1949.

The Baudet du Poitou, a shaggy-coated donkey breed prized for siring mules, comes from which country?

By 1977 the breed had dwindled to just 44 animals before a rescue effort began.

Miniature Mediterranean donkeys in the US descend from 1929 imports from which island?

Robert Green of New York brought over seven; adults stand 36 inches or less at the withers.

Which is the largest species of wild ass, native to the Tibetan Plateau?

It averages 140 cm at the withers, taller than most domestic donkeys.

The onager, or Asiatic wild ass, is among the fastest mammals; roughly how fast can it run?

That is close to a racehorse's top speed and far beyond any domestic donkey.

Roughly how many critically endangered wild asses, the donkey's ancestor, survive in the Horn of Africa?

The Somali subspecies has zebra-like black stripes on its legs.

What is a hybrid of a zebra and a donkey commonly called?

In Tijuana the same word is used for donkeys painted with stripes to pose with tourists.

The Bronze Age kunga was a cross between a female donkey and a male of which species?

Cuneiform texts describe them as hybrids, but only modern paleogenomics revealed the exact parentage.

Which founding figure is called the "father of the American mule" for breeding them at Mount Vernon?

By 1799 his estate held 27 horses, 20 donkeys and 63 mules.

From which California desert did the famous twenty-mule teams haul wagons of borax in the 1880s?

Each team was actually eighteen mules and two horses, hauling ten tons of ore per trip.

In American politics, the donkey is the unofficial mascot of whom?

Cartoonist Thomas Nast popularised the symbol in the 1870s, alongside the Republican elephant.

In the Book of Numbers, whose donkey sees an angel blocking the road and speaks to its master?

King Balak of Moab had hired him to curse Israel, but he ended up blessing them instead.

Which biblical strongman killed a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass?

He also slew a lion with his bare hands, according to the Book of Judges.

Christians remember Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem on which day of the church year?

He sent two disciples ahead to the village of Bethphage to fetch the animal.

Who voices Donkey in the Shrek films?

His character marries Dragon and fathers a litter of Dronkeys.

What is the name of the gloomy grey donkey in Winnie-the-Pooh?

He was based on a stuffed toy bought at Harrods, which now lives at the New York Public Library.

What is the favourite food of the gloomy donkey in Winnie-the-Pooh?

He is also famous for a detachable tail fixed on with a drawing pin.

Which weaver in A Midsummer Night's Dream has his head turned into a donkey's by Puck?

The fairy queen Titania falls in love with him under a spell.

In Carlo Collodi's original novel, Pinocchio turns into a donkey after fleeing to what place?

Disney's 1940 film renamed it Pleasure Island.

Who wrote The Golden Ass, the only ancient Roman novel to survive complete?

Its hero Lucius is finally restored to human form by the goddess Isis.

Which Nobel laureate wrote Platero y yo (1914), about a writer and his silvery donkey?

Platero's name comes from plata, the Spanish word for silver.

Buridan's ass is a philosophical paradox in which a donkey starves because it cannot choose between what?

The original version places it exactly midway between hay and a pail of water.

Which Australian stretcher bearer became an Anzac legend for carrying the wounded on a donkey at Gallipoli?

He worked under fire for three and a half weeks before being killed by machine-gun fire.

Brighty of the Grand Canyon, a 1953 children's novel about a real burro, was written by which author?

A bronze statue of Brighty stands in the lobby of the North Rim's Grand Canyon Lodge.

Who recorded the 1960 novelty hit "Dominick the Donkey"?

A 2011 BBC Radio 1 campaign pushed it onto the UK singles chart half a century later.

The 1977 TV special Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey is based on a song by which singing cowboy?

Rankin/Bass produced it, the same studio behind Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

The Nintendo character Donkey Kong, despite the name, is what kind of animal?

Shigeru Miyamoto created him in 1981 to reuse unsold arcade cabinets from the flop Radar Scope.

Which ancient Greek physician was the first to write about the medicinal use of donkey milk?

Its lactose and protein levels are closer to human breast milk than cow, sheep or goat milk.

Which Roman empress, Nero's wife, is the source of the milk-bath legend later tied to Cleopatra?

Claudette Colbert played both women on film in the 1930s, and the story migrated from one to the other.

In the United States, donkeys are commonly kept as guard animals to protect which livestock?

They bray loudly and strike at predators with their front hooves; in 2019 they made up 14 percent of American livestock guardians.

In which ancient civilisation were ten donkeys found buried like high-ranking humans in a pharaoh's tomb?

The 2003 excavation of King Narmer's or Hor-Aha's tomb showed how prized the animals were to the earliest state.

How is a donkey's bray usually written in English?

The call typically lasts about twenty seconds and may help solitary desert donkeys keep in touch across wide spaces.

What lifespan can a well-kept donkey in a prosperous country reach?

Height varies just as widely, from under 90 cm at the withers to about 150 cm depending on breed and conditions.

By what nickname was the donkey once known, alluding to its loud bray?

One theory derives the word 'donkey', first recorded around 1784, from Spanish, though its origin remains obscure with no credible cognate.

Which regional English word for a donkey may be of Welsh or Romani origin?

Cuddy was the Scottish term, neddy south-western and dicky south-eastern; 'donkey' itself gradually replaced 'ass' from the 18th century.

About what share of its body weight in dry matter does a donkey need to eat each day?

Its hind-gut fermentation is more efficient than a horse's, and donkeys are also less prone to colic, though the reasons are not fully understood.