A Study of African Wild Ass Behavior Provides Insights into Conservation Issues, Domestication Processes and Archaeological Interpretation

African wild asses (Equus africanus) were the wild ancestors of the donkey and are now critically endangered. Ethological and middle range research on Somali wild asses (E. a. somaliensis) at the Saint Louis Zoo provides insights into social behavior in captive setting and domestication processes. We observed a group of three young female Somali wild asses to develop an ethogram of social behavior in the first phase of a longer-term study of social, sexual, and maternal/infant behavior. The most unexpected finding was the frequency and extent of aggressive interactions, yet they also displayed a preference for close proximity. As the first quantitative study of the social behavior of wild asses, these results provide insights into domestication processes, suggesting that in captivity African wild asses are behaviorally plastic. These findings regarding the behavior of captive wild asses further the goals of both archaeology and conservation biology.     

The Heritage of an Empty Land: Independence Valley,Nevada

Although emigrants, railroaders, cowboys and shepherds passed through northeastern Nevada's Independence Valley in the 19th century, colonization did not begin until the early 1900s when dozens of homesteader families occupied claims. Soon, parts of this drab basin contained houses, barns, fences, occasional irrigation ditches and fields of dry farmed grain and alfalfa. Plans were made to convert a solitary railroad section camp into a market town and to connect it via a spur track with a group of nearby mines. But drought and jack-rabbit invasions stifled the homesteaders, while the mining operations were squelched by the onset of the Great Depression. Today, Independence Valley is uninhabited, but its sunbaked flats still contain numerous homestead remnants, abandoned fields, section line roads and the section camp's ruins, which form a distinctive landscape mosaic that characterizes many parts of the Great Basin.     

Donkey Domestication

Donkeys are one of the least studied large domestic animals, even though they are economically important in many regions of the world. They are predominantly used as transport animals. Consequently, they are not kept in large numbers and this limits the number of archaeological specimens available for study. The donkey’s closest relative is the African wild ass, and genetic studies and zooarchaeological analyses of early donkeys indicate domestication of two genetically separate groups of wild asses in Africa. Maternal relationships revealed by mitochondrial DNA show that one group of donkeys was derived from the Nubian wild ass and that one was derived from an unknown ancestor distinct from the Somali wild ass.