Neighing and braying in North Africa

The mysterious wild ass of Atlas, the equine hunted by the Romans

The equine family, although it seems small today, was once very numerous in the old world, wild horses, zebras, onagers and wild donkeys often exist in continuous habitats.

Among these species, there are some that are completely mysterious, like those we already saw that possibly lived in Europe, but these are not the only ones, There are many more cases, like the one we will see below, of a mysterious donkey living in the Atlas Mountains, before continuing, thank you for reading, I hope you support and share this project, without further ado we start.

The mysterious donkey of the Atlas Mountains 

The Atlas donkey, with the proposed name eqqus africanus atlanticus, is a possible subspecies of the extinct African wild ass that probably lived in the territory of Atlas., In addition to modern-day Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, it is also theorized that it could have inhabited rocky areas of the Sahara Desert, but not in sands that avoid wild asses.

According to ancient drawings, the Atlas wild ass had stripes on its legs and a cross on its shoulder, typical of living subspecies of the African wild ass, North African wild asses being consistently depicted in ancient art as similar, but being darker in color than subspecies of Nubian and Somali wild asses, its general color being gray, with marked black and white stripes on the legs, and a black cross on the shoulders, (sometimes folded), in comparison, the Nubian wild ass is gray with crosses on the shoulders but no stripes, and the Somali wild ass is sandy with black stripes but without crosses on the shoulders, in fact one or both features occasionally appear in domestic donkeys, wild and primitive domestic donkeys are indistinguishable from their bones, which complicates its identification in archaeological sites.

Theories 

  While the existence of several rock art representations and Roman mosaics leaves no doubt about the previous existence of wild asses in North Africa, It has been claimed that the original bones that were used to describe the Atlanticus subspecies by paleontologists such as Alfred Romer between 1928, 1935 and Camille Arambourg in 1931 discovered in several rock shelters in Morocco and Algeria are of a fossil zebra, therefore, the name E.a atlanticus may not be valid to refer to the Atlas wild ass.

Another hypothesis is that the appearance of Nubian and Somali wild asses was clinal and that they appeared different as a result of the recent extinction of populations of intermediate appearance, This would make the living African wild ass a monotypic species with no subspecies, and would at least question the existence of extinct subspecies such as the Atlas wild ass, However, genetic studies have since shown that Nubian and Somali wild asses are different enough to warrant subspecies status, furthermore, domestic donkeys have two different haplotypes, one shared with the Nubian wild ass, and another of unknown origin that is not found in the Somali wild ass, and the presence of the Atlas ass in the ancient world may be a plausible source for the second haplotype. 

Extinction

  Due to the scarce valid paleontological evidence and their few representations in art, it cannot be said for sure if they existed, but if it had existed it was surely extinct in the times of the Roman Empire due to abusive hunting for sport, Also due to its use in the coliseum, we can know that this is due to the fact that it is represented in a mural with a hunting scene from a town in Bona, Algeria, dating from the year 300.

Even so, reports from the 20th century about wild donkeys from northern Chad and the Hoggar massif in the central Sahara are doubtful, let's hope one day this will be resolved, although it is a shame that such a strange and interesting creature became extinct, all because it was used as a circus act, and it is not the only one, almost all of the megafauna that populated the atlas has disappeared, from the aurochs of North Africa, to the mythical Lion of Atlas and the Carthaginian elephant, Let us hope with all our hearts that a reflection will be reached soon and that extinctions such as those of the Atlantic fauna will no longer occur.

[Reading links]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_wild_ass

https://silfum.blogspot.com/2023/04/relinchos-misteriosos-en-el-horizonte.html?m=1