Equus asinus
Linnaeus, 1758 · speciesAt a glance
Sources10 archives
Databases and archives Equus asinus's data was compiled from.
WikipediaWikimedia Foundation21 languages↗
Animal Diversity WebUniv. of Michigan MZspecies account↗
BioWikiNetmultilingual Wikipediamultilingual↗
GBIFGlobal Biodiversity Information Facility9 817 records↗
ENAEuropean Nucleotide Archive · EMBL-EBI664 eDNA detections↗
BOLD SystemsCentre for Biodiversity Genomics670 specimens↗
Open Tree of LifeOpenTreephylogeny backbone↗
GoaTGenomes on a Tree · Sangergenome & karyotype↗
NCBIUS National Library of Medicinegenome & karyotype↗
Paleobiology DatabasePBDB consortiumfossil record↗Every layer below draws on the sources above — open one to explore it, or use ← → to move between tabs.
Both African wild asses and domestic donkeys have a shoulder height range between 110 and 140 cm. The mass is not often reported but Piccione et al. (2008) reported the average mass of 5 adult females as 320 +/- 15 kg. The foal birth weight range is from 20 to 34 kg. Males and females are alike in their size, weight, and coloring. Their hair is longer on the dorsal end of their body. Their hair differs from the texture to the length. Their coat color is mainly a shade of gray, but the fur is white on their underbelly, muzzle, ears, around the eyes, inside the ears, and on the legs. They have a dark dorsal stripe and have black, horizontal stripes on their legs. The coloring is the same for both the juveniles and adults. Donkeys have a metabolic rate of 164.92 cm3 oxygen/hour. The dental formula is 313(4)3/3133, with tooth totals varying from 40-42. They have small hooves that allow them to navigate around the rocky areas. It also allows them to have steady footing when traveling in the mountains.
No narrative description available for this taxon yet.
Size & morphology2
Life cycle & reproduction7
Diet & foraging1
Habitat & environment2
Physiology & chemistry1
Other traits5
A DNA barcode is a short, standardised stretch of genes that works like a fingerprint — enough to tell one species from another. Below is the molecular trace Equus asinus has left across the world's sequence archives.
At a glance
★ the standard DNA barcode for this group — the short region actually read to tell this species apart. The rest are extra genes sequenced along the way.
Besides the big genome in the nucleus, cells carry a small, circular loop of DNA inside the cell's energy factories — the mitochondria. It is inherited almost only from the mother and is a leftover from ancient bacteria that moved into the cell. The mitochondrial markers above (ND*, COX, CYTB…) are read from exactly this loop. Outer ring = one strand, inner ring = the other.
The complete instruction manual Equus asinus carries — its genome. We read it from three angles — how big it is, how the DNA is packed into chromosomes, and how completely it has been sequenced — and explain how to read each value as you go.
Genome sizehow big the whole instruction manual is
Measured in base pairs (bp) — the individual letters of DNA (human ≈ 3.2 Gb, a bacterium a few million). The chart places this genome on a logarithmic scale — each step to the right is ten times bigger — among reference organisms. Across species a bigger genome loosely tracks with larger cells, slower growth and lower-energy lifestyles (powered flight favours small genomes) — yet it does not imply more genes or a more advanced organism (the long-standing C-value paradox).
Chromosomes & ploidyhow the DNA is packaged
2n is the full chromosome count in a normal body cell; n is a gamete (egg or sperm), which carries half. Ploidy is how many complete chromosome sets each cell holds — 2× (diploid) is typical for animals, while higher levels (polyploidy) are common in plants. Click any value below to see the underlying records and sources.
Sequencing statusassembly quality — how far to trust these numbers
Assembly level tells you how finished the sequence is — from fragmented contigs, through scaffolds, up to a full chromosome-level assembly. BUSCO % estimates completeness: the share of genes expected to be present that were actually found. These describe the data quality, not the organism.
How far back this lineage goes — and how we know. Everything here is measured in Ma, short for “mega-annum”: millions of years ago. The chart reads left to right like a calendar of the Earth, from the deep past on the left to today at the right edgetop to bottom like a core drilled through the Earth, from the deep past at the top down to today at the bottom.
At a glance
When this lineage existed
How to read this: the coloured strip along the bottomdown the left is the geological calendar — the standard epochs (Pliocene, Pleistocene…) every museum uses, shown so you can see which chapter of Earth's history this lineage lived in. This lineage is a young one, so the strip is zoomed in to epochs — the finer subdivisions inside a period. The solid bar is the fossil range: the span between the oldest and the youngest fossil that palaeontologists have assigned to Equus asinus. Above itBeside it, the bars count how many dated finds fall in each slice of time; the tallest bar is labelled, and heights use a square-root scale so that thin slices stay visible next to rich ones. Read this as how well each stretch of time is preserved and studied — thick bars mean plenty of the right kind of rock and plenty of collectors, which is related to, but not the same as, how common it actually was. The orange marker is the DNA clock: DNA accumulates mutations at a roughly steady rate, so comparing this species' DNA with its relatives estimates when the lineage split off — independently of any fossil. Where the DNA reaches further back than the oldest fossil, the gap is hatched: the ghost lineage. It means the lineage was already out there, but has left us nothing we have dug up yet.
How it livedPBDB
Record type9 848 records
Origin
Range
Wildobservation + sensor
Human sightings and records, or camera-trap / sensor detections — someone (or a device) saw or captured the species in the wild.
Museum / Voucheredphysical evidence
Backed by a physical specimen — a herbarium sheet, sample or voucher held in a collection. “Vouchered” means supported by material evidence, not just an observation.
Wildobservation + sensor
Human sightings and records, or camera-trap / sensor detections — someone (or a device) saw or captured the species in the wild.
Holding institutions16 of 24 geolocated
Institutions and collections holding physical, vouchered specimens of this species — click a row to fly to it on the map.
| Institution | Specimens |
|---|---|
| EL PASO, US | 18 |
| CASlocation not on record | 7 |
| Stockholm, SE | 5 |
| Buenos Aires, AR | 5 |
| Wuzhou, CN | 3 |
| Zacatecas, MX | 3 |
| Cambridge, US | 3 |
| Geneva, CH | 2 |
| San Diego, US | 2 |
| Chicago, US | 2 |
| California State University, Long Beachlocation not on record | 2 |
| Texas Memorial Museum, Texas Natural History Collectionlocation not on record | 2 |
| Helsinki, FI | 2 |
| Natural History Museum Rotterdamlocation not on record | 2 |
| Berkeley, US | 1 |
| Sydney, AU | 1 |
| Puerto Ayora, EC | 1 |
| Toronto, CA | 1 |
| ASUlocation not on record | 1 |
| Bonn, DE | 1 |
| ASNHClocation not on record | 1 |
| Florida Museum of Natural History- Zoology, Paleontology & Paleobotanylocation not on record | 1 |
| CEFElocation not on record | 1 |
| Paris, FR | 1 |
Where the DNA of Equus asinus was picked up in samples of water, soil or air — nobody saw the organism, only its DNA left behind. A trace is a clue that the species was near, not a confirmed sighting.
Signal
Where its DNA was found
How strong is each trace?
Modelled climatemodelled
How to read this: each dot is one detection of this species' DNA in an environmental sample. The confidence meter weighs how many independent studies and places back up the signal — one detection in one study is a hint; many across several studies is solid. Records dated before 2008 (when eDNA methods began) are treated as likely mislabeled and left off the map.