Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Perissodactyla > Equidae > Equus > Equus asinusEquus asinus (ass; burro (feral); burro; African wild ass)Synonyms: Asinus africanus aegyptiacus; Asinus asinus; Asinus vulgaris; Equus africanus asinus; Equus asinus asinus; Equus asinus palaestinae The donkey or ass (Equus africanus asinus) is a domesticated member of the horse family, Equidae. The wild ancestor of the donkey is the African wild ass, E. africanus. The donkey has been used as a working animal for at least 5000 years. There are more than 40 million donkeys in the world, mostly in underdeveloped countries, where they are used principally as draught or pack animals. Working donkeys are often associated with those living at or below subsistence levels. Small numbers of donkeys are kept for breeding or as pets in developed countries. |
Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) Unique (100) Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) Unique & Vulnerable (100) ED Score: 11.33 EDGE Score: 5.28 |
| Adult Weight [1] | 363.76 lbs (164.998 kg) | | Birth Weight [1] | 66.139 lbs (30.00 kg) |  | | Diet [2] | Herbivore | | Diet - Plants [2] | 100 % | | Forages - Ground [2] | 100 % | | | Female Maturity [1] | 1 year 11 months | | Male Maturity [1] | 2 years 9 months | | | Gestation [1] | 11 months 29 days | | Litter Size [1] | 1 | | Maximum Longevity [1] | 47 years | | Snout to Vent Length [3] | 6.56 feet (200 cm) | | Weaning [4] | 1 year 1 month |
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| Name |
Countries |
Ecozone |
Biome |
Species |
Report |
Climate |
Land
Use |
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Ethiopian xeric grasslands and shrublands |
Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia |
Afrotropic |
Deserts and Xeric Shrublands |
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Mediterranean acacia-argania dry woodlands and succulent thickets |
Morocco, Spain |
Palearctic |
Mediterranean Forests, Woodlands, and Scrub |
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Mediterranean conifer and mixed forests |
Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia |
Palearctic |
Temperate Coniferous Forests |
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Mediterranean dry woodlands and steppe |
Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia |
Palearctic |
Mediterranean Forests, Woodlands, and Scrub |
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Mediterranean woodlands and forests |
Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia |
Palearctic |
Mediterranean Forests, Woodlands, and Scrub |
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Sahara desert |
Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Algeria, Mauritania, Mali, Chad, Niger |
Palearctic |
Deserts and Xeric Shrublands |
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Sahelian Acacia savanna |
Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia |
Afrotropic |
Tropical and Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas, and Shrublands |
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Somali Acacia-Commiphora bushlands and thickets |
Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan |
Afrotropic |
Tropical and Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas, and Shrublands |
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South Saharan steppe and woodlands |
Mauritania, Mali, Algeria, Niger, Chad, Sudan |
Palearctic |
Deserts and Xeric Shrublands |
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Tibesti-Jebel Uweinat montane xeric woodlands |
Chad, Libya |
Palearctic |
Deserts and Xeric Shrublands |
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West Saharan montane xeric woodlands |
Algeria, Niger, Mali, Mauritania |
Palearctic |
Deserts and Xeric Shrublands |
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Attributes / relations provided by ♦ 1de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774 ♦ 2Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027 ♦ 3Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109 ♦ 4Equus asinus, Martha I. Grinder, Paul R. Krausman, and Robert S. Hoffmann, MAMMALIAN SPECIES No. 794, pp. 1-9 (2006) ♦ 5Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics. ♦ 6Species Interactions of Australia Database, Atlas of Living Australia, Version ala-csv-2012-11-19 ♦ 7Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London ♦ 8International Flea DatabaseEcoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database |
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0
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