Latest news with #donkey
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Goat Has Genius Way of Reaching the Leaves on a Tree With Help From Donkey Friend
Goat Has Genius Way of Reaching the Leaves on a Tree With Help From Donkey Friend originally appeared on PetHelpful. Sometimes, the most unlikely animals become the best of friends and are inseparable, and that's exactly the case with House No Rules' goat and donkey. She recently shared a video on Instagram that perfectly captures the strength of their bond. The video begins showing the two animals together, with Amber the goat standing on Dolly the donkey's back. Both look like they're totally comfortable with the situation, although it's not something that the rest of us are used to seeing every day. The old saying, "A friend in need is a friend indeed" definitely applies here! House No Rules explains the situation in the video's caption, "Whenever Dolly sees Amber next to this tree, she makes her way over to give her a boost so that she can eat the hard-to-reach leaves. It's a beautiful bond; they speak a language only they understand, and Dolly gets a great shiatsu massage out of it!" Commenters also got a kick out of Dolly and Amber's beautiful friendship. @jessicacrazychickenlady shared, "Teamwork makes the dream work! LOL!" @prairiesonginthebraid joked, "'I get high with a little help from my friends' LOL!" @ahntym asked, "Are they practicing for The Bremen Town Musicians?", referring to the beloved fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm about four aging animals who escape mistreatment and find a new home together. @Wonderlinghotel thought the same, 'OMG the musicians of Bremen was REAL….." Another commenter swooned, "How beautiful is this friendship?!" @delightfulcocoabunny jokingly wondered, "What was that conversation like?! LOL! How much convincing did that take?" @silly_goose_365 added, 'And they say it's only in the movies..."Amber really goes out of her way to get to those leaves on the tree! This made us wonder if leaves are a natural part of a goat's diet. Savvy Farm Life explains, "Goats are browsers rather than grazers, so this means they prefer eating vegetation in the form of twigs, leaves, shrubbery, and bark, or anything they may find at eye-level. They can also safely eat fruits, vegetables, and whole grains in moderation." Goats are notorious for eating anything and everything they can find. The same article says these are some of the foods you should never feed your goats. They include finely ground grains, meat, avocados, cherry pits, potatoes, and chocolate. If you find your goat has eaten any of these things, consult your vet. Goat Has Genius Way of Reaching the Leaves on a Tree With Help From Donkey Friend first appeared on PetHelpful on Jul 12, 2025 This story was originally reported by PetHelpful on Jul 12, 2025, where it first appeared.
The Guardian
25-06-2025
- General
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on China, Africa and disappearing donkeys: an unexpected crisis offers a clue to perils ahead
What can help to protect women's health, boost the incomes of impoverished families and thus allow girls to avoid early marriage? What – when it disappears – can set back children's education, damage mental wellbeing, drive conflict within communities and become a vector for racial hatred? The humble donkey has rarely been in the spotlight. Yet Chinese demand for its skin proved so destabilising that African governments agreed to a continent-wide ban on the slaughter of the animal for its hide last year. This week, officials are meeting in Ivory Coast to discuss implementation. A recent paper by Dr Lauren Johnston of the University of Sydney outlines the extraordinary rise and fall of the Sino-African trade in donkey skins, and its repercussions. Ejiao – donkey hide gelatine – was first developed around 3,000 years ago and is used in traditional Chinese medicine, and more recently in beauty products. Longstanding demand was supercharged by growing prosperity and media influence, reportedly surging after characters in a popular Chinese TV period drama, Empresses in the Palace, were shown taking it. But while production of ejiao had been industrialised, a problem soon emerged: donkeys are notably hard to breed. Ejiao consumption equates to 4m to 5m hides per year, equivalent to almost a tenth of the global donkey population. China's stock of animals plummeted from 11 million in the early 1990s to just 2 million – and attention turned to African hides. The continent is home to almost two-thirds of the world's 53 million donkeys. Their use as beasts of burden there dates back even further than the invention of ejiao; owners describe them as priceless. Despite governments' attempts to regulate the trade in hides, there were repeated complaints not only of inhumane treatment but also crime; on one estimate, as many as a third of the exported hides were stolen. Families woke to find their animals had vanished, or been slaughtered and skinned on the spot. Many could not afford to replace them, because the price of new animals had soared. Without the creatures, women are often forced to carry heavy loads of firewood or water; children may be kept home to help with chores; families can no longer rent donkeys to neighbours, reducing their incomes. Former owners reported reduced wellbeing and increased stress. Some suspected their neighbours of stealing their donkeys, and in South Africa, online posts about Chinese gangs involved in the illicit trade attracted comments inciting racial hatred. The African Union ban may tackle some of these problems. But it may also be shifting them. In Pakistan, the price of the animals has rocketed. The case of the missing donkeys may sound like a niche concern but is really a particular instance of a pressing global issue. Oil and minerals may get the attention, but growing competition for resources – driven by increasing prosperity in economies such as China and India and the pace of consumer culture – can pop up in unexpected areas, hit the poorest hardest and create new diplomatic, social and economic tensions. Addressing such cases will take not only determination but ingenuity and a willingness to work with unlikely allies: Africa's ban was driven by a coalition of farmers, animal rights campaigners, economists, gender activists, religious leaders and others. It will also need to be done at speed. The donkey shock is not a one-off, but a warning of other potential flashpoints ahead. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
BBC News
11-06-2025
- BBC News
Morocco's new cross-country cycling route
Winding from southern deserts into snowcapped mountains towards northern beaches, the Route of Caravans offers adventurous travellers a stunning glimpse of the nation few tourists see. "No route, no route!" said a smiling man wearing a long white robe and holding a stout shepherd's staff, his donkey in tow. He pointed over his shoulder, down the U-shaped canyon I had planned to follow to the nearest road, which was still several kilometres away. He then motioned towards the ground, indicating that the rough terrain my travel companion and I were pushing our bicycles over continued long into the canyon. "That's okay," I said to him in French, shrugging in the direction we'd come from. "There's no route back that way, either." It wasn't precisely true. While the canyon trail we'd been traversing in Morocco's soaring High Atlas mountains wasn't exactly manicured, it was nevertheless part of a brand-new bikepacking route. We had just set out on the 837km Route of Caravans: Morocco Traverse (North), the second leg of a recently completed two-tier cycling trail traversing the length of Morocco from the town of Tiznit on the country's south-western coast to Tangier in the north. Since a digital map of the route's northern leg debuted on the adventure-cycling website Bikepacking in autumn 2024, it has lured bikepackers (off-road cyclists who carry overnight gear) to wind, slalom and climb their way from the town of Imilchil in the High Atlas Mountains past rolling hills and alpine passes to the Mediterranean port city, where they can catch a ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain. Tracing its arc from southern desert to northern beaches, the trail's two legs make use of ancient caravan roads trod by camels' hooves and shepherd paths used by the country's Indigenous Amazigh (long referred to as "Berber" by outsiders) communities who have called Morocco home for some 20,000 years. The route is the result of a long-held dream of a handful of adventurous international cyclists keen to forge a path through some of Morocco's least-visited regions. To me, it felt like slipping through the country's backdoor and, occasionally, a bit like time travel. Following narrow paths through pastures where shepherds graze flocks on rain-fed grass, I got a firsthand glimpse of the seasonally nomadic lifestyle that still thrives in the mountains. In remote canyons, I met Amazigh women who piled their donkeys high with edible herbs and wildflowers foraged in meadows far from their mud-brick homes. The Route of Caravans is one of many long-distance bikepacking routes sprouting up around the world in places like the Peruvian Andes, North America's Continental Divide and the Scottish Highlands where intrepid two-wheeled travellers can immerse themselves in stunning natural settings and remote communities. The challenges these routes present – such as terrain so rugged you may occasionally "hike-a-bike" instead of pedalling it – are all part of the appeal. The new route also had a personal draw for me. Having travelled to Morocco decades earlier and following the classic tourist's itinerary between cities like Fez, Marrakech and Essaouira, I was haunted by glimpses of the more remote places I passed between such sites, and curious about those who lived there. Riding the Route of Caravans would be a return, of sorts – one focussed less on sites themselves than on the places in between. After checking my steel mountain bike as baggage on the flight and strapping it with bags to carry my clothes, camping gear and equipment, I set off from the bus station at Beni Mellal, a 135km ride from the route's starting point in Imilchil, beginning a slow climb into the still-snowy summits of the High Atlas mountains. Over the next two weeks, the Route of Caravans would carry me across three mountain ranges, into ancient cities, through Amazigh villages and towards Tangier, where two seas and continents meet. "[The route is] shockingly diverse," said Evan Christenson, a cyclist from San Diego, California, who scouted and designed the route for Bikepacking. "You go from the High Atlas, which is just exposed raw granite, and into the green and rolling pastures of the Rif Mountains… There are different cultures you go through, too." More like this:• Scotland's epic 210-mile bikepacking adventure• A new 5,500km bike trail connecting one of Europe's most remote regions• Canada's delectable 235km food trail Cycling between the villages of the High Atlas mountains, I saw the anthropomorphic yaz symbol (representing freedom and independence for the Amazigh) scrawled on the houses and shepherd huts. And while I'd heard intermingled French and Arabic in the streets of Marrakech, many of the people we met in the mountains spoke dialects of the Amazigh language Tamazight. "Azul," I said, on the second day on the route, when I joined a handful of women filling bottles at a public tap in a community too small to be named on the map. The oldest among them had geometric facial tattoos on their chins and cheeks, the intersecting lines creased and blurred with time. I sat down to wait my turn, but they ushered me to the front of the line. "Azul," they said, smiling. The Tamazight greeting translates, literally, as "from the heart". In such moments, I felt a world away from the Morocco that has recently seen explosive tourism growth – 17.4 million travellers arrived in 2024, representing a 20% increase compared to 2023. A 2024 McKinsey & Company report on global tourism listed Marrakech as one of the cities most impacted by overtourism worldwide, with an additional 86% rise in tourism projected by 2030. Yet the Route of Caravans' far-flung villages, sheep-dotted meadows and remote stone shelters offer travellers a glimpse of Morocco few experience. Arriving in the small town of Boumia after days camping under stars and frost-touched pines, we shopped for dates and bread on the single main street and met Nabil Abdullah, a young man who'd clocked us as outsiders and hoped to practice his English. "Here, we get maybe five or 10 tourists a month. With you, this month, I think it's seven," he said, before inviting us to his home for lunch. Creating an 837km cycling route that avoids main roads in settings that are sometimes profoundly isolated requires a huge amount of work – and in this case, collaboration. In spring 2024, Christenson spent about six weeks crisscrossing the northern half of Morocco on two wheels, riding back roads and donkey trails, and exploring shepherd paths he'd spotted on satellite maps of the region. "I had a pretty good idea of where I wanted to go," he explained. "And then, if it didn't go through, I would turn around and try again." As Christenson created the digital map, he dropped occasional hints for riders about where to sleep, find water and buy food. Fortunately for cyclists, wild camping is tolerated across much of rural Morocco: we set up our two-person tent in rocky canyons; pine forests; and in an ancient, long-abandoned mudbrick building. One night, as dusk fell on a hilltop site in the Middle Atlas mountain range, we watched as a family of endangered Barbary macaques leaped between the crowns of towering Atlas cedars. "It's a special perspective to be travelling through these places on a bicycle," said Sarah Swallow, an American cyclist who completed the 1,266km southern portion of the Route of Caravans this spring. "It's more intimate – not only with the landscape and the natural environment, but also the people… you're vulnerable in a lot of ways, so you open yourself up to more experiences, like needing people's help, or leaning on people at times." Already, some ambitious cyclists are linking up the two halves for an extraordinary, country-spanning journey. Early on our trip, we met south-bound cyclists Julia Winkelbach and Christian Wagner, who had left their home in Germany the previous summer and were riding the entire 2,103km route from Tangier to Tiznit. They told me they sometimes carried 20 litres of water while riding through the Sahara, had camped through a sandstorm and found scorpion tracks around their tent. It speaks to Morocco's astonishing contrasts that as Winkelbach and Wagner travelled deeper into the world's largest hot desert, we wound north through the softening topography and lush vegetation of the Rif Mountains. The increasingly gentle landscape and hint of sea salt in the breeze hinted that Tangier wasn't far. Approaching the coast drew us closer to the city's big resorts and tourist crowds, yet our route still felt like a rolling ramble through remote landscapes cloaked in green. Wishing to savour the quiet for one night more, we gave a final glance towards the path leading to Tangier and turned onto a paved road that hugged a quiet stretch of coastline. Our final campsite was on a sandy beach at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. With bare feet in the sand, we stood by our bikes and waited for sunset, watching as Venus flickered above the far horizon. The mountains at our back, we woke to the sound of waves. -- For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
BBC News
13-05-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Donkey makes hospice patient's 'wish come true'
A hospice has helped a resident's wish come true by arranging for a donkey to visit Margaret's Hospice in Taunton put out an appeal for help after patient Jacquie said it was her dream to give a donkey a back the donkey's owner, Richard Norman responded and brought her in to meet Jacquie and other patients at the charity said the "out of this of social media" had allowed them to find the donkey. Mr Norman said three-year-old Britney, who has been in films and TV shows, including secret projects with Hollywood A-listers, is a "real character" and is "always busy".After the visit he told BBC Somerset: "I had a lump in my throat. She [Jacquie] was stroking her and we really made her day."We did a circuit around everybody, the patients and families loved seeing her and stroking her.'He added: "I take for granted being able to see her and stroke her, when these people don't get enjoy doing things like this."If you want to make the time, you can make the time." Hayley Milne, the hospice's head of communications, said it was a "mission" to find the donkey but it made Jacquie's "wish come true"."There are lots [of donkeys] in Somerset but for one reason or another, some didn't have the facility to transport the donkeys to us or their donkeys didn't travel well, so we were beginning to struggle,' she said."But through the power of social media, we put out a plea, and our incredible community just supported us.'Ms Milne said despite Jacquie being poorly, she was able to scratch Britney's back."It was an incredible really lit her up," she said.
