Kulratan Sandhu, age 10, of Canton, Ohio for the question:
What is an onager?
The onager is first cousin to the kiang and the chigetal, also known as the dziggetai. No, these fellows are not members of the family of bottled genies, though all of them do live in the mysterious east where Ali Baba's genie had such a frolic. These fellows are sprightly little wild asses. The onager, also known as the ghorkhar, is at home in the deserts of northwestern India, in Iran and Syrian
A grown onager is no bigger than a medium sized donkey, but he is a great deal more frisky. With his high stepping gait, he can travel sixty miles in less than two hours. When he has to sprint, he can cover the first mile in just over a minute and keep going at 35 miles an hour until most horses would be worn out. What's more, he is a sure footed animal and can travel safely over rough, stony ground. No wonder people find this wild ass hard to catch, even on horseback,
Over some of this range, the winters are cold and the desert ground is often oovered with snow. So the onager has a change of clothing. In summer, he wears a coat of cinnamon brown. In winter he wears a lighter. shade of buff or yellowish brown. We rarely, if ever, find him alone, for the wild ass is a friendly creature, always in the company of friends or relatives.
The herd does very well on the tough desert grasses, for they are always sleek, well fed and very active, Water is scarce 'and the frisky little animals manage to get along with a drink only once every few days. The foals, however, do need more water, When the babies axe born, the mothers leave the herd and live for a time near a stream or some well¬watered oasis,
The onager is but one of many wild asses of the Old World. Most of them live in rocky desert regions where they are hard to catch. The chigetal, alias the dziggetai, is a native of the bleak Atlas Mountains of North Africa. He also has relatives in the Gobi desert and Mongolia.
The Kiang is a wild ass who makes his home on the lofty slopes of Tibet.
To see them in their native homes, you would think that these wild asses had been there since the beginning of time. But this is not so. The original ancestors of all the horsy animals had their beginnings in North America. This is the cradle of the horse family, yet when Columbus arrived there were no horses in the New World at all.
The reason for this is a story at least 50 million years old, and some of it still secret. At one time there were land bridges from the Old World to the new and, of course, the little horses went exploring. Some of them settled in new homes in Europe and Asia. Those that remained at home all perished, though we have no idea why.