What a great animal-to-human relationship; as good as it gets in a beautiful environment. My word, I am impressed. From an animal welfare point of view everything about this family is good judging by the video. A humble donkey is being cared for and their life immeasurably improved by their close friendship with the little boy who loves animals by the look of it and who loves to do chores involving animals. He is a brilliant boy and all credit to his parents and it seems the mom who made the effort to organise the video. The video maker is credited at the end.
A bit about donkeys and friendship
The first important point to make here is that donkeys are social animals. They like company and they form strong bonds with companions as we can see in the video. They are not suited to living alone and without a buddy they can become sad, depressed and lonely. Normally people recommend adopting a pair of donkeys so that they have a companion for life. Although they prefer to become a couple with another donkey, they occasionally bond with other species including the human species. I’ve seen quite a number of videos of very close relationships between donkeys and people.
Donkeys dislike wild dogs and other members of the dog family including coyotes and foxes. They can be taught to tolerate them however.
Donkeys show their affection through nuzzles, vocalisations and licking as we see in the video, and nips. When their ears are forward-pointing it suggests that they are happy and alert. Braying can be a sign of affection and they sometimes make this vocalisation when they become excited when humans come to them with affection and a desire to pet them.
Donkeys are not exactly like horses as they differ emotionally, mentally and physically. They are more stoic in their behaviour. They tend to startle less easily. They show limited fear response to new situations. Sometimes this can be interpreted as stubbornness.
In the video, it seems that this donkey is treating the toddler as their leader. Sometimes donkeys may try and establish dominance by biting. And apparently sometimes if a donkey has not accepted a person as their undisputed leader, they may be inclined to try to bite to establish dominance over that person.
Note: This is an embedded video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source or the video is turned into a link which would stop it working here. I have no control over this.
