Zool. Garten N.F. 83 (2014) 146–154www.elsevier.com/locate/zooga

The forgotten donkey’s history. Remarks onAfrican wild asses of the GiardinoZoologico in Rome and their relevance forEquus africanus (von Heuglin & Fitzinger,1866) taxonomy and conservationDie Geschichte eines vergessenen Esels –Bemerkungen zu den im Giardino Zoologico inRom gehaltenen Afikanischen Wildeseln und ihrerBedeutung für die Taxonomie und Erhaltung vonEquus africanus (von Heuglin & Fitzinger, 1866)

Spartaco GippolitiScientific consultant, Zoo d’Abruzzo, Viale Liegi 48A, 00198 Rome – Italy

Received 13 July 2014

Abstract

This paper reviews the history of African wild asses in the Giardino Zoologico of Rome, highlightingtheir relevance to taxonomy of Equus africanus (von Heuglin & Fitzinger, 1866). Specifically, it isdemonstrated that the so-called Munich/Catskill stock of African wild ass originated from threeanimals imported in Rome from Eritrean Danakil in August 1932. Available evidence suggests thatcontrary to some recent statements, these ‘wild’ asses were not related to the Nubian wild ass and arebetter considered as the result of some intergradations between Somali wild asses and local Danakildonkeys.

Keywords: Nubian wild ass; Equidae; Equus africanus africanus; Eritrea

E-mail address: spartacolobus@hotmail.com

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Introduction

After World War II, the status of the Nubian wild ass Equus africanus africanus (vonHeuglin & Fitzinger, 1866) received lesser and lesser attention by the scientific community.Two factors may be partially responsible for such situation; political instability and militaryconflicts in the range countries (Ethiopia and Eritrea) and taxonomic confusion surroundingdifferences with the other subspecies Equus africanus somaliensis (Noack, 1844), an issuecomplicated by possible interbreeding with donkeys.

In accordance with the general tenor of the time towards ‘geographic variation’ (Gippoliti& Groves, 2012; Gippoliti, Cotterill, & Groves, 2013), the matter regarding the two assestaxa were so treated by Yalden, Largen, & Kock (1986) “Ansell (1971), largely follow-ing Groves, Ziccardi, & Toschi (1966), suggests that two races of Wild ass occur, or onceoccurred, in Ethiopia; E. a. africanus (including dianae) to the north of Massawa and E. a.somaliensis (including somalicus) further south, while Ziccardi (1970) also recognizes E.a. aethiopicus as a valid subspecies in the intervening Danakil Desert. There are, however,no ecological discontinuities or geographical barriers which might give substance to suchtheories of intraspecific differentiation and, in all probability, there has never been morethan one continuously distributed race in NE Africa. From all points of view, the surviv-ing populations of E. africanus are best regarded as monotypic”. Coupled with the abovementioned political instability of the region, it is no surprise if such taxonomic attitude hadrepresented a final epitaph for the Nubian wild ass. The present paper do not intend to reviewthe taxonomy of African wild asses (see Groves & Smeenk, 2007), although some remarkson the issue are presented. In particular, some facts concerning the history of African wildasses maintained at the Giardino Zoologico in Rome are presented and their relevance forEquus africanus taxonomy and conservation explained. Hopefully, the remains of theseanimals preserved in the Museo Civico di Zoologia in Rome may be included in futurestudies of the species.

Do Nubian wild asses survive in captivity? The Rome animals

In a recent volume on ungulate taxonomy, Colin Groves and the late Peter Grubb (Groves& Grubb, 2011) claimed that a stock of wild asses referable to the Nubian taxon still survivein captivity in North America. These asses descent from the so-called Munich/Catskill stockand originated from an importation of wild asses from Eritrea to Munich Tierpark in the1930s (Heck, 1973; Schlawe, 1980). This at least was the official history so far known.

It is apparent from the available breeding records of the Giardino Zoologico in Rome thatfrom 1935 a breeding group of Danakil wild asses was present at the zoo (D’Alessandro& Gippoliti, 1992; Gippoliti, 2010, 2013). The entry date for the three founders, one maleand two females (Fig. 1) was 6 August 1932 (Gippoliti, unpublished). I was able to findthe birth date of the two first recorded foals, two females, born 10 April and 13 May 1935respectively. On 18 May, 1937, four Danakil wild asses, one male and three females (almostsurely the four foals born in 1935 and 1936), were sent to Tierpark Hellabrun, Munich, thatreceived them on 25 May (Heck, 1973; Pohle, 1973). In the same shipment together with

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Fig. 1. The three founders of the Danakil wild asses stock in Rome (From: Il Giardino Zoologico diRoma nel XXV anniversario, Rome, 1935).

the four African wild asses, also the female Przewalski’s horse ‘Roma’ reached MunichZoo that send the female ‘Selma’ in exchange to Rome. That Rome maintained the originalbreeding group seems to be confirmed by the births of two foals on February and June 1939.

The Danakil wild asses in Rome were labeled Equus asinus taeniopus. This nomenclaturefollowed de Beaux (1928), who believed the name E. taeniopus Heuglin, 1861 to describe atrue wild ass, distinguished by the presence of leg stripes like the Somali wild ass, and thushad priority over somaliensis Noack, 1884; but in Munich and elsewhere, the variability incolour (grayish and reddish) and colour pattern (presence or absence of the shoulder crossand leg stripes) created uncertainty over their taxonomic status, and, after the War, theywere first unassigned any subspecific status, and later removed from the zoo populationworldwide (Pohle, 1973; Pohle, 1999). Groves (1986) had previously considered them asbelonging to the subspecies africanus and certainly true wild asses [as done by van Bemmel(1972) that also showed a picture of the three Roman founders]. Although we could notexamine the skins of some wild asses at the Museo civico di Zoologia in Rome, the skullsseems clearly different from those of truly Nubian wild ass (Iurino, pers. comm.) and it ismore likely that the Roman Danakil asses represented to an unknown degree the result ofintergradation between wild Somali asses and domestic donkeys. It is interesting to notethat we find an old photo showing two clearly different types of donkeys in a Danakil village(Rocco, 1967, Fig. 2); one is really similar to wild asses and closely resembles the RomanDanakil wild asses.

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Fig. 2. Donkeys in a Danakil village, circa 1930 (From: Rocco, R. 1967. La grande trappola. DeDonato, Bari).

The Rome Zoo African wild asses were well-known to experts before World War II.Regarding the Danakil asses taxonomic status, Antonious wrote “Only in the breed of“Dancalia asses” existing to-day in the Zoological Gardens at Rome and Munich thereseems to be a strain of true wild blood. These asses, like the Nubian race in their verybright colour and their short and narrow shoulder-stripe, resemble the Somalian race intheir banded limbs” (Antonius, 1937).

An indirect evidence also came from the fact that none of the Danakil’s ass females wasnever mixed with the Nubian wild ass male living in Rome in the same years (see below),nor any contemporary researches suggested they belonged to the same taxon. Skulls size,old photos and memories of living testimony (Silvano Leonardi, pers. comm.) confirmsDanakil asses in Rome were smaller than the single Nubian wild ass housed in the samezoo, while true Somalian wild asses are generally considered higher than Nubian wild ass(van Bemmel, 1972).

It should be noted however that a recent genetic study through mtDNA sampled twospecimens from the Munich stock (Kimura et al., 2011) and included them in clade 1 andclade 2 together with domestic asses and Nubian asses, but this may be due to the donkeyancestry of mares. It is well-known the practice of mounting by wild stallions of domesticmares existing in Eritrea (de Beaux, 1928).

Regrettably, practically nothing has been recorded about the Danakil ass founders, whowere living in Rome until 1957. We known that the Giardino Zoologico in Rome hadpreviously received a female Nubian wild ass, which lived in the zoo from 1924 to 1928

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Fig. 3. Nubian wild ass female at the Giardino Zoologico in Rome, circa 1925.

and was discussed by de Beaux (1928) and figured in several publications (Fig. 3). In 1934,a male Nubian wild ass arrived in Rome from Eritrea, possibly the last of his species toreach Europe alive. This latter stallion was never mixed with the Danakil mares but from1939 produced some hybrids with a domestic donkey and subsequently with her daughters.Although the presence of this Nubian ass in Rome was known internationally (Antonius,1937; Harper, 1945), no particular plan seems to have been made to try to save an endangeredspecies, even if the Nubian wild ass was thought at the time to be still relatively common inthe Red Sea hills on the Eritrean border with Sudan. As stated by Dollmann (1935) in hisdescription of Equus asinus dianae, based on two specimens collected by Powell-Cottonsouth of Tokar in 1934, the Arab guides “told us they [the asses] were more numerous acrossthe Eritrean boundary”.

Righetto, the last of the ‘Nubians’

A male of Nubian wild ass arrived in Rome 22 July 1934 from the Eritrean Colony.This was not the first Nubian wild ass arrived in Rome, as a female had lived there from1924 to 1928. The exact place of origin of both individual asses is unknown, but de Beaux(1928) suggested that the origin of the female should be placed along the Barka Riverplain, but I failed to find other evidences supporting this claim. The 1934 male was named‘Righetto’ probably with reference to his long and narrow shoulder stripe (‘riga’ in Italian).Apparently, Righetto was not subject to any detailed observation while living. Beginning inOctober 1939, Righetto produced a number of foals with a domestic ass named ‘Rina’ and

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Fig. 4. Nubian wild ass male Righetto at Giardino Zoologico in Rome, circa 1950.

subsequently with his daughters. The scanty available data I could gathered from the zoorecords, shows that at least three other females produced foals sired by ‘Righetto’ (‘Dora’,‘Europa’, ‘Nubia’). On 3 July 1953 ‘Righetto’ died after 19 years in Rome. It was probablythe last pure Nubian wild ass in captivity. In March 1954 three Nubian hybrid assess weresold. There are data of another birth, a male, (‘Righett x ‘Nubia’) on 14 June 1954 and adeath foal was produced 26 May 1956. On 21 February 1957 there is the last reference toNubians wild asses at Rome, with the selling of one female. Groves (1986) included theskull of ‘Righetto’ at the Museo civico di Zoologia in Rome (n. 6488) in his study of thehorse family morphometrics. A photo of aged Rigetto is included here for the first time(Fig. 4).

For the few photos I was able to found, ‘Righetto’ show a remarkably long shoulderstrip, quite different from those of the 1924 female and most other Nubian wild asses. OnlySclater (1884) figured a Nubian ass, living at the London Zoo, with a similar long shoulderstripe to my knowledge. The hairs of the mane in Nubians seems short and black, while bothDanakil and Somalia’ asses show longer hairs, basically cream-white and black apically.

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Fig. 5. Somalian wild ass from Danakil at the Zoological Museum of Florence University (Photo: S.Gippoliti).

Much has been said about the presence of shoulder strip in the Somali ass. Not only two ofthree Danakil asses of the Rome stock, but two of eight specimens in Italian museums (Turin,Genova, Milan) hold the shoulder strip (de Beaux, 1928) as three more museum specimensI saw (Parma, Florence, Milan; Fig. 5). This apparently contradicts the assumption fromGroves and Smeenk (2007) that seems to deny the presence of shoulder strip in pure Somaliasses.

Remarks on former status in the wild

Probably because its perceived ‘marginality’, very little attention was paid to the con-servation of the Nubian wild ass in Eritrea under Italian rule. After the war with Ethiopia,a system of hunting reserves was established in Italian East Africa (Anonimo, 1940). Itincluded one set up specifically for the Somali wild ass in the Harrer plain (Miesso Reserve)and the Job Reserve, close to the border with Sudan, for the protection of the Nubian ibexCapra nubiana. It is interesting to note, to the end to highlight as the wildlife of this regionwas very poorly known, that Nubian ibexes were officially discovered in North Eritrea onlyin 1932 (de Beaux, 1934).

In the last Italian report on the Eritrean wildlife, Cianni (1942) reported the Nubian wildass was relatively common in the region of Hagar Abbau, and precisely in the area betweenthe confluence of the Rabà with the Anseba and the Ras Gaba plane. In a paper published

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well after the war (Granara, 1964), the hunter Giulio Pazzé reported that the Nubian wildass, locally known as ‘Macomar’, was still hunted in the same area were the Nubian ibexis found, north of Agordat toward the Sudanese border.

Even active supporters of African wild ass conservation, such as Major FerdinandoZiccardi, concentrate their attention almost exclusively to the subspecies somaliensis(Ziccardi, 1970).

Moehlman (2002) by implication considered the Nubian wild ass to be extinct, at least inSudan: it “lived in the Nubian desert of north-eastern Sudan, from east of the Nile River to theshores of the Red Sea, and south to the Atbara River and into northern Eritrea” (Moehlman,2002), mentioning that the last sightings were in the 1970s on the Eritrean border.

In a paper on the origin of domestic asses (donkeys), Beja-Pereira et al. (2004) comparedmtDNA sequences in donkeys, Somali wild asses and what were stated to be Nubian wildasses, the latter (as specified in the supporting online material) from fresh faeces “collectedin Sudan from two different wild herds (21◦08’N 36◦20’E – 20◦46’N 36◦49’E)”. GivenMoehlman’s (2002) treatment, quoted above, this land, unqualified statement is surprisingand may be partly explained with former introgression between wild asses and donkeys.An extensive genetic study of ancient and recent African wild asses remains (Kimura et al.,2011) demonstrated that from a mtDNA perspective, Nubian and Somali wild asses aredistinct so confirming Groves taxonomic view.

Conclusions

We can only echo Dathe’s remarks regarding the disappearance of wild asses from zoosacross Europe: “Therefore, nowadays we can hardly understand why the great majority offormer zoologists did not take charge of this wonderful species nor have developed appropri-ate breeding groups. Doubtlessly, they considered the habits of the wild ass to resemble toomuch that of the domestic ass and, therefore, to be too little attractive and curious or worthseeing” (Dathe, 1973). Equally cogent is the comment of van Bemmel (1972) regarding thepoverty of museum’s specimens, both wild and captives “Of the breeding group in Munichonly one skin and skull have been preserved, of the breeding group in Vienna only the skullof a stallion was retained. . .”. Fortunately, a viable captive population of pure Somali wildass is now maintained in world zoos and reserves. Regrettably, much less is known aboutthe fate of the distinctive Nubian wild ass. The Munich/Catskill stock survivors have no roleto play in the conservation of this distinctive taxon for which field surveys (and eventuallyconservation measures) are desperately needed after 80 years of neglect.

Acknowledgements

This paper is dedicated to the memory of Major Ferdinando Ziccardi for his love towardthe neglected African wild ass. Prof. Colin Groves provided continue inspiration in thefield of mammal taxonomy and conservation. Claus Pohle provided key literature. LotharSchlawe is thanked for having introduced me to the issue of African wild ass taxonomy andzoo history a long time ago. Thanks are also due to Silvio Leonardi and Dawid Iurino.

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