Talk:Burro

Relevance

This seems like a very limited subject, without any mention of the more common use meaning 'Donkey' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.66.192.62 (talk) 05:42, 5 December 2005

Not sure how old this comment is, but the topic was just spun off from the main donkey article, as the burro is a special variant of donkey seen in the Americas with protected legal status in the USA. As such, when looking at a worldwide scope, the terms "donkey" and "burro" are not necessarily synonymous, though often used that way in the USA. I take no position on the split off of this article from the donkey article, though will note that the donkey article is getting some much-needed and long-neglected cleanup and that a list of donkey breeds has also been created. Montanabw^(talk) 17:12, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Merge

Seeing as now little has been done to expand this article, I believe it is suitable to re-merge back into the donkey article. I recommend that discussion of the merge be consolidated at Talk:Donkey. Montanabw^(talk) 19:34, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Dubious, hell, it's complete hogwash

An edit summary reads "Dubious, hell, it's complete hogwash", and accompanies the removal from the article of the phrase "many of whom were themselves of Mexican origin" which qualified "the burro was the beast of burden of choice of early prospectors". Well, hogwash it may be, IDK. But this is Wikipedia, where we go by the sources, and pay scant attention to the personal opinions of editors, some of whom express those personal opinions, however ill-informed, with monotonous regularity. The phrase in question is sourced to a book by Sandra L. Olsen. It's called Horses through time and was published for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. It is cited at length by the International Museum of the Horse. Olsen writes "Many of the prospectors were Mexican and the burro was their preferred pack animal". If this is hogwash, please adduce a number of reliable sources that state an opposing view. If those are not forthcoming, I suggest that an apology to Ms Olsen might be in order? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:25, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

What was hogwash not the statement that burrows were pack animals; it was was the statement that prospectors "many of whom were themselves of Mexican origin" in that your close paraphrase doesn't reflect the author's intent (that some prospectors were Mexican) as your phrasing implies that a majority were. This is not so. I have no idea what statistics Ms. Olson used, but "many" can mean a couple hundred people out of thousands who flocked to the California gold fields. "Many" prospectors were also Jewish, Chinese, Irish, Italian, American-born or whatever. Again, your blatent anti-Americanism and ignorance of western history is showing. Montanabw^(talk) 21:51, 10 February 2012 (UTC) Follow up: Another error of the section you attribute to Ms. Olson is the statement that the Gold Rush occurred in the Southwestern United States. Though gold was mined in Arizona, the biggest "rush" was in northern California and in terms of economic impact of the prospector-with-burro model, the subsequent movement of miners into Nevada and Montana (and Colorado, Utah and other places) were more significant than those who later returned to Arizona and New Mexico. Gold Rushes occurred throughout the western United States as far north as Alaska (though the sled dog, not the burro, was the beast of burden of choice there) Burros were used as far north as they could adapt, including California and Nevada, and, to some extent, points farther north. However, feral populations did not thrive in the mountains, where most gold was mined, and thus their appearance in desert areas may or may not be directly attributable to gold mining; they may well have had previous feral populations established. Again, Ms. Olson may know horses and donkeys, but she is not a western historian (I am sure you agree that many people experts in one area are not experts in another). I own "Horses Through Time" by the way. In hardcopy. However, as I have a very busy real life right now, I have no time to look further into this, but if you are in fact truly dedicated to accuracy, as opposed to trying to inject an agenda across wikipedia with superficial research, I am sure you can locate material that will explain this. Montanabw^(talk) 22:13, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Table

The table listing burro populations in various states does not appear to have a source nor is there any indication of a date. Surely actual populations vary from year to year and these figures are only estimates of the actual population, as I imagine that is is next to impossible to be sure every burro in existence at any point in time has been actually counted. Wschart (talk) 15:23, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

The FAO has estimates; I think we have stats in the body text. If we don't, we should. Ag statistics are pretty common. But they are like a census, sure, some critters get missed. Montanabw^(talk) 20:46, 2 August 2013 (UTC)