Talk:Onager

It should be noted that the statement: "Onagers were used in ancient Sumer to pull chariots, circa 2600 BC." may be suspect. Note that in the chariot entry there is a statement that says: "The earliest spoke-wheeled chariots date to ca. 2000 BC..." Other sources date the Sintashta-Petrovka chariot burials to possibly 2100 BCE. Therefore I am modifying the date to be consistent. SunSw0rd 16:27, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Why did someone delete the part about the sub species Ae12079410 12:30, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

They may be untamable, but Jules Verne's protagonists managed the task in The Mysterious Island. 21:56, 22 September 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.137.30.238 (talk)

On the subject of onagers drawing chariots - I found references to crosses between donkeys and onager jennies named kunga which appear to have been domesticated. Jorganos (talk) 07:48, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Kulan needs to be removed
According to research it has been proven that Onager and Kulan are actually two different species Research by DVM Karin Krüger, therefore I suggest to either put the Kulan in a separate article or make a mention in this article and remove it only from the subspecies list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amrbc (talk • contribs) 09:20, 11 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Your link does not open Nemohuman (talk) 16:30, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
 * If the Kulan isn't taken out, then the fact that there are at least two mentions of "five subspecies" in the article text, plus the comment "A sixth possible subspecies... has been proposed," while the list of subspecies in fact includes six, could do with sorting.
 * Also, regardless of which way the Kulan issue is taken, there are two extinct subspecies in the list of subspecies as it stands - I am not clear, but it looks as if this may be due to the addition of the European Wild Ass as a subspecies of Onager? The introduction currently says that "Five subspecies have been recognized, one of which is extinct," actually there are currently six subspecies in the list two of which are extinct.
 * Having said, if the question of species/subspecies relationships remains in dispute, it might be more sensible to straighten the article out by stating the ambiguities clearly, rather than by trying to make it represent one position unambiguously! FloweringOctopus (talk) 06:40, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

"Never been domesticated"
This page says the Zebra has been domesticated but the Onager hasn't. The Zebra page contradicts this, saying the Zebra "has never truly been domesticated". Clarify? 198.72.164.111 (talk) 04:32, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Also, attempts were made. The Onager was not uncommonly kept *as* a domestic animal in Israel 2000 years ago, even as it was recognized that the animal was wild and presented a hazard. This is mentioned in the Talmud.

(This may be the source of some of the confusion. People were keeping and using the animal, but it resisted domestication.) Drsruli (talk) 22:00, 15 October 2023 (UTC)


 * We know that wheeled vehicles were employed in Mesopotamia by 3000 BC in early Sumer, and their presence in southern Mesopotamia has no obvious direct association with the Indo-Europeans. These vehicles were basically drawn by bovids, although there was a gradual increase in the use of equid draught in Western Asia. This, however, was primarily the onager or ass, and at no time prior to the second millennium BC can we regard Southwest Asia as practising the horse- and chariot-centred warfare that one finds among the Indo-Aryans. The earliest evidence for the horse in Western Asia is presently limited to Tal-i Iblis in south-central Iran (3500 BC) and Selenkahiyeh in Syria (2400-2000 BC), and its attestation in cuneiform texts appears to be similarly late and dates to the end of the third millennium BC. But from early in the second millennium BC we find unequivocal evidence for both the horse and the chariot, and by the seventeenth-sixteenth centuries this form of warfare is found from northern Anatolia south to Nubia, which illustrates the rapid spread of this revolutionary technology. J.H. Crouwel and M. A. Littauer have argued that this evidence suggests a perfectly logical evolution of the two-wheeled cart into the spoked-wheel chariot within Western Asia itself prior to the appearance of the Indo-Aryans whose presence in this region cannot be demonstrated before about 1600 BC. Some scholars such as Diakonov go on to argue that there is consequently no case for employing the earliest appearance of the domestic horse and chariot in the Near East as an ethnic marker for Indo-European migrations.
 * J.P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans, pg. 41
 * Eugenia ioessa (talk) 22:36, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

External links modified
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References needed
I've marked three sections as requiring more references:



Supplying these would improve the credibility of this interesting article. Also, it'd be great to have some facts to support such "weasel words" as "this beleaguered species" (my emphasis). yoyo (talk) 13:12, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Sumerian war chariots were pulled by onager-donkey hybrids
Source. Menah the Great (talk) 19:20, 2 March 2022 (UTC)