Dr. Faith Burden

And you will also see if...

An animal has had to be given up by caring owners that then come and visit that animal.

You can, in certain circumstances, see just such emotion on both sides to be back together again.

And of course, that's all to do with, you know, donkeys are masters of social bonding and behavior and they are really good at communicating, not just with each other, but with us if we listen.

Oh, humour's a very sort of human trait, isn't it?

And we do try not to anthropomorphise, but there are occasions where I think a donkey at least enjoys getting a reaction.

So I can remember when I first started to really work with donkeys, I used to have a big, heavy jacket for the winter and it had elasticated toggles on the side and donkeys...

would really enjoy pulling on the toggle.

And of course, they all got an ouch because those things really hurt when you get struck with them multiple times in a day.

So I think, you know, there are examples of that.

And the donkey that opens the gate to let everybody else out, obviously, there's an advantage to them.

But sometimes you do wonder.

They certainly enjoy the reaction that they're getting from us, I think.

Yeah.

great question so mules are the cross of a horse or pony mother and a donkey father there is another one which people know much less about which is the hinny where the mother is a donkey and the father is a horse or pony much less known about much fewer of them but still happens so there is an uneven number of chromosomes between horses and donkeys so horses have got

64 donkeys have got 62 which means that you get an uneven number which means the resulting offspring is sterile so that 99.99% means that a mule or a hinny cannot reproduce so it's a really good question why do people have them

Mules possess hybrid vigor, both physically and mentally.

So they have often increased size and speed as compared to a donkey, but they have the calmness and the

the toughness of the donkey.

So in a mule you've got an animal that can go longer distances, is normally very disease resistant, tends to carry more in weight than either a donkey or a horse and has a speed between the two.