Kunga: the story of how for one crossed six ordinary ones were given (6 photos)

Yes, in this ratio they were changed to ordinary eared ones. What caused such a high price of these creatures?





Mankind has long been dabbled in breeding all sorts of different hybrids. The most famous are mules, ligers, tigons, coywolves, bison. Not much is known about these, but at some point in time they played an important role in history.



Kunga on a plate

Donkeys have been tamed by people for a very long time. But despite the strength endurance and unpretentiousness eared creatures demonstrated wild stubbornness, unwilling to obey. And whether by accident or on purpose, but in someone's bright head the idea came to cross the aggressive wild donkeys and stubborn but calm domesticated. This is how kungs appeared.

Researchers were well aware of their existence thanks to clay tablets of Mesopotamia. But until recently the problem of classification remained relevant. What type of these creatures? After all, there were no analogues, even remotely similar, in nature.



Fragment of the Sumerian standard

And then suddenly a sensational discovery happened: yes, this is hybrids, first. Not mules, as previously thought. Kungs jumped the fruit love of a donkey and a mare, thousands of commercials for two years. The mothers of these creatures were quiet domestic donkeys, and for the role of fathers they chose the now extinct Syrian onager.



Latest image of the Syrian onager

According to the records preserved on the tablets, it was found out that one the hybrid cost six times as much as the domestic donkey. fed expensive purchases of special feed, not available for free grazing released. Piety also demonstrates the burial of animals along with hosts.

Which, in general, is natural, since obtaining each individual It was a long and labor intensive business. Kungs, like mules, turned out barren and could not bear offspring.



The Persian onager is a subspecies of the kulan. The only living relative of the extinct Syrian onager.

Another component of the price is a set of qualities. hybrids possessed strength, endurance, speed, courage. What made them ideal animals for battles and wars. Respectively, exploit such animals for other purposes - for the transport of goods or cultivation of land was not economically viable.



That is, from the home mother, the kungs took relative softness, humility and compliance, and savage fathers endowed offspring decisiveness and an optimal set of qualities for military purposes.

These unusual hybrids disappeared after the advent of horses, suitable for both work and war, since the breeding of the latter was easier and cheaper business.