Dumb or smart asses?

Scientific evidence for intelligence in donkeys could expose their historical unmerited cognitive derogatory status. Psychometric testing enables quantifying animal cognitive capabilities and their genetic background. Owing to the impossibility to use the language-dependent scales that are widely used to measure intelligence in humans, we used a nonverbal operant-conditioning problem-solving test to compute a human-analogous IQ, scoring the information of thirteen cognitive processes from 300 genetically tested donkeys. Principal components and Bayesian analyses were used to compute the variation in cognitive capabilities explained by the cognitive processes tested and their genetic parameters, respectively. According to our results, IQ may explain over 62% of the cognitive variance, and 0.06 to 0.38 heritabilities suggest that we could ascribe a significant proportion to interacting genes describing the same patterns previously reported for humans and other animal species. Our results address the existence of a human-analogous heritable component and mechanisms underneath intelligence and cognition in probably one of the most traditionally misunderstood species from a cognitive perspective.

Can Scientists Influence Donkey Welfare?

Humans have greatly benefited from their relationship with donkeys. Different roles that donkeys play in high- and low-income countries are two sides of the same coin. Their draft power is indispensable in low-income countries, and by contrast, their milk in Europe is fetching a premium. New productive niches are controversially being explored, for example, donkey meat and skin (ejiao); both are considered premium products and have increased value of donkeys in many developing regions of the world. New advances in human medicine are starting to consider possibilities of donkey serum and heart valves. Scientists and channels that they use to spread their knowledge directly influence public interest and implementation of welfare practices in domestic species, indirectly affecting their survival.

Donkeys defining role and relationship with humans constantly change according to literature.

The study's aim was to trace historical registry of www.sciendirect.com directory from 1896 to 2018 to assess trends followed by articles dealing with donkeys. Publications with 22 themes and 114 publications (91 JCR indexed journals) from 56 countries were included. JCR impact index was scored to study influence of publications dealing with donkeys. Chi-square test tested six variables, randomly influenced by the rest. Cramer's V measured strength of association between variables. Statistically significant differences were observed between almost every combination of variables except for year and JCR impact, year and area/topic and country of the corresponding author, and area/topic of submission. JCR impact and journal influences the area of the articles that are published. As some countries are more specialized in certain themes concerning donkey-related sciences, they are more likely to publish.

Can We Use Donkey Behavior and Cognition to Trace, Explain, or Forecast Moon and Weather Events?

Donkeys have been reported to be highly sensitive to environmental changes. Their 8900–8400-year-old evolution process made them interact with diverse environmental situations that were very distant from their harsh origins. These changing situations not only affect donkeys’ short-term behavior but may also determine their long-term cognitive skills from birth. Thus, animal behavior becomes a useful tool to obtain past, present or predict information from the environmental situation of a particular area. We performed an operant conditioning test on 300 donkeys to assess their response type, mood, response intensity, and learning capabilities, while we simultaneously registered 14 categorical environmental factors. We quantified the effect power of such environmental factors on donkey behavior and cognition. We used principal component analysis (CATPCA) to reduce the number of factors affecting each behavioral variable and built categorical regression (CATREG) equations to model for the effects of potential factor combinations. Effect power ranged from 7.9% for the birth season on learning (p < 0.05) to 38.8% for birth moon phase on mood (p < 0.001). CATPCA suggests the percentage of variance explained by a four-dimension-model (comprising the dimensions of response type, mood, response intensity and learning capabilities), is 75.9%. CATREG suggests environmental predictors explain 28.8% of the variability of response type, 37.0% of mood, and 37.5% of response intensity, and learning capabilities.