Donkeys in danger get help from far-away friends

Davaa Lkhagvasuren showing a specimen, Photo: (C) YG

They are also increasingly rare – so rare that they are in danger of dying out.
To corral the creatures, Mongolian scientist Davaa Lkhagvasuren found he had to come to Germany.

Lkhagvasuren, a 29 year-old PhD student, works at the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History in Görlitz, about 100 kilometers east of Dresden on the border with Poland.  His donkeys are not alive, or even in one piece. Instead, the museum houses scores of skulls collected from donkeys found dead in Mongolia.

Inside these skulls is information that could help protect the rest of the donkey population. Lkhagvasuren intends to get it out.

Guns and grazers

About 80 percent of the world’s Asian wild donkeys live in Mongolia, where they are known as khulan. That makes Lkhagvasuren’s country the center of the fight to save these animals.

“When it’s over in Mongolia,” Lkhagvasuren said, “it will be the same way for the world.”

Donkeys are said to be stubborn, and so far the khulan have refused to disappear. But the dangers are catching up. Khulan are under assault from poachers, who can sell the animals’ meat. Some 3,000 donkeys are estimated to be shot each year – a huge number relative to the total population, estimated at no more than 20,000 in the last count.

But it’s not just guns that are killing the khulan. In the last 50 years, the animals have seen their rangeland cut in half, said Professor Hermann Ansorge, who is supervising Lkhagvasuren’s PhD candidacy. Climate change is sucking away vegetation and water. And domesticated herds that compete with the donkeys for those resources swelled after the fall of Communism as more Mongolians took up nomadic herding, Ansorge said.

Donkey demographics

Lkhagvasuren is using the skulls to build a family tree of sorts for the khulan. He is guessing the age of each animal by inspecting its teeth. The skulls also could indicate whether the donkeys have split into genetically distinct groups, a bad sign for endangered animals. The researcher will even check for developmental problems, which can show up in asymmetries on the skulls. Lkhagvasuren hopes to develop a population model based on what he learns.

The donkeys all look alike and scientists need a method for assessing their age, so Lkhagvasuren’s approach could be a great help, said Chris Walzer, a researcher at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna. In general, scientists are still groping for a window into the demographics of the khulan population, Walzer said. ´

“That’s something we really know nothing about,” he said.

A joint German-Mongolian team harvested the skulls between 2001 and 2004 from donkey carcasses found on the steppes. Most of the animals had been killed by poachers, who cut away what they needed and left the rest behind. The skulls were brought to Germany because there was no facility that could house them properly in Mongolia, said Ansorge, a leader of the effort. The specimens are split between the Görlitz museum and a facility in Halle, some 250 kilometers to the west.

Lkhagvasuren first came to Germany in 2007 to help prepare the skulls for study. A year later, he returned with support from the German Academic Exchange Service to scrutinize the specimens.


 “Der Esel”

The former German Democratic Republic fostered a strong relationship with its Communist partner to the far east and united Germany has carried on the tradition, according to the German foreign ministry.

All that diplomacy did not mean coming to Germany was easy for Lkhagvasuren. The challenges started with learning the language - no small job when there are three versions just of the word “the.” Lkhagvasuren was quick to note that donkeys get a “der,” the masculine form, and “die” in the plural.

He appears to have adjusted well, though, having picked up not just the language but some German culinary habits, too.

 “He puts mustard on everything now,” Ansorge said.

The researchers say they still have a lot of work ahead of them in Germany, but Lkhagvasuren is sure to get a taste of home soon. He and Ansorge plan to go back to Mongolia this summer to collect more skulls.

www.naturkundemuseum-goerlitz.de

www.vu-wien.ac.at/en