That animal is a kunga, which the researchers show was a cross between a female donkey and a male Syrian wild ass. Kungas were valuable in Mesopotamia, costing up to six times as much as a donkey.

Bronze Age bioengineers created the earliest hybrid animal – a majestic horse-like creature known as a kunga that had a donkey mom, a Syrian wild ass for a father and lived 4,500 years ago.

The kunga’s mother was a donkey and its father a hemippe, making it the oldest evidence of humans creating hybrid animals. A mule from 1000 B.C. in Anatolia reported by the same research group ...

Called a kunga, the donkey-like creature may have been considered a status symbol about 4,500 years ago. Skip to main content. Search Shop Newsletters Renew Give a Gift Subscribe.

In ancient Mesopotamia 4,500 years ago, long before horses arrived in the region, another spirited member of the equine family, the kunga, took a starring role in pulling four-wheeled wagons into ...