A donkey can lose a third of its body water and keep walking. A person in that state dies. A horse too.

And it was precisely this animal that became an insult in almost every language in the world. How did that happen?

First, a combination of names. Donkey is the domesticated species that came from Africa. "Jegue" is the same animal, used informally, in the backwoods of Brazil. And "burro," strictly speaking in animal husbandry, isn't even a donkey: it's the offspring of a donkey and a mare—the female of this crossbreed is called a mule. In common parlance, everything became the same thing, and became an insult as well.

In this episode, we dissect the donkey entirely and answer three questions: why its name became synonymous with stupidity, what goes through its head when it stops in the middle of the road, and why its wild ancestor is disappearing now.

We start with its origin, and there's some news there. In 2022, an international group analyzed the genomes of 238 donkeys and rewrote history: all domestic donkeys on the planet come from a single domestication, about 7,000 years ago, not in Egypt, but in the Horn of Africa. Fifteen hundred years before the horse.

Then comes the body. The narrow, elastic hoof that grips where the horse's slips. The short, rigid back that carries a third of its own weight. The ears, radiator and antenna at the same time. The bray that can be heard three kilometers away. And the blood that doesn't thicken when the body is already dry.

Then comes the most discussed subject: stubbornness. The horse came from the plains, where the only effective response is to run immediately. The donkey came from the stone desert, where running ends in a broken leg. There, another reaction survives: it stops, assesses, decides. Those who work with donkeys have known this for generations—if the animal balks before a ford, experienced people don't hit it, they go to look at what's underwater. And then there's the part that's ours. It was the donkey and mule trains that extracted gold from the mines and transported coffee to the port before the railroad; many Brazilian cities were born where the trains stopped. In the backlands, the donkey was never just a joke: it became a folk poem, a monument in a public square, and a race that's a city-wide celebration, and Luiz Gonzaga recorded "Apologia ao Jumento" — "The donkey is our brother."

The end is what hurts. In the world, there are about 50 million domestic donkeys. Of the African wild ass, from which they all came, only about 200 adults remain. And in Brazil, the curve plummets: from about 1.3 million in the 1990s to tens of thousands today. We explain how the cheap motorcycle emptied the donkey's function, how the loose animals ended up on the side of highways, and how the raw material for the leather exported to the Chinese ejiao industry came from there.

No myths here: where numbers are discussed, we say they are discussed.

This is an independent documentary episode. The script, structure, narration, editing logic, and selection of visual material were prepared specifically for this video. Some of the images may come from open and licensed stock photo libraries, including Pexels, Pixabay, Envato Elements, and other platforms. These materials illustrate an original script.

IN THIS VIDEO:

00:00 — The caravan in the Egyptian desert
00:54 — Donkey, burro, mule, and hinny: who's who?
03:14 — From Egypt to the genetic discovery of 2022
06:47 — The wild ancestor in the Danakil desert
09:39 — Hoof, skeleton, fur, and ears
15:28 — The machine for surviving thirst
19:34 — Stubbornness or risk assessment?

23:16 — A day in the life: wild vs. domestic
25:47 — Bonds, offspring, and the guardian donkey
29:57 — Breeds, mules, and the chromosome count
33:40 — From king's animal to insult
36:07 — The backlands: cordel, forró, and monument to the donkey
36:50 — The leather crisis and the ejiao
39:39 — Brazil within this chain
40:14 — The motorcycle, the loose animals, and the roads
41:07 — The numbers of the fall, justice, and the Senate
43:02 — Back to the caravan: the three answers

SOURCES:

Science (2022) — the 238 genomes that pointed to a single African domestication
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s...

IUCN Red List — Equus africanus: critically endangered, Approximately 200 adults
https://www.cms.int/sites/default/fil...

Animal Diversity Web — Equus asinus
https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/...

The Donkey Sanctuary — African Union bans slaughter for hides (February 2024)
https://www.thedonkeysanctuary.org.uk...

Chamber of Deputies — risk of extinction and request for a ban on Slaughter
https://www.camara.leg.br/noticias/12...
Brazilian data and the l...