Equus asinus Linnaeus, 1758

Peter Grubb, 1993, Order Perissodactyla, Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 369-372 : 369

Equus asinus Linnaeus, 1758 . Syst. Nat., 10th ed., 1:73.

TYPE LOCALITY: "Habitat in oriente" (= Middle East?) .

DISTRIBUTION: NE Sudan (now extinct); NE Ethiopia; N Somalia; up until the third century A.D. in N Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia; domesticated worldwide; feral or possibly wild in Hoggar (S Algeria) and Tibesti (N Chad); feral in Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Socotra Isl ( Yemen), Sri Lanka, Australia, USA (including Hawaiian Isis), Galapagos Isis, Chagos Isis and probably other oceanic islands.

STATUS: CITES - Appendix I as E. africanus ; U.S. ESA and IUCN - Endangered as E. africanus (= asinus ).

SYNONYMS: aethiopicus, africanus , atlanticus, dianae, somalicus, taeniopus, vulgaris .

COMMENTS: Ansell (1974a:6) recommended use of africanus as specific name, since the name asinus was based upon domestic populations.