Donkey have worked together with humans for millennia. Traditionally, the scientific name for the donkey is "Equus asinus asinus" based on the principle of priority used for scientific names of animals. However, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature ruled in 2003 that if the domestic species and the wild species are considered subspecies of one another, the scientific name of the wild species has priority, even when that subspecies was described after the domestic subspecies. This means that the proper scientific name for the donkey is "Equus africanus asinus" when it is considered a subspecies, and "Equus asinus" when it is
Equus (genus) each other both visually and vocally. Human activities have threatened wild equine populations. The word "equus" is Latin for "horse", and is cognate with the Greek ἵππος ("hippos"), "horse", and Mycenaean Greek "i-qo" /ikkʷos/, the earliest attested variant of the Greek word, written in Linear B syllabic script.; compare the alternative development of the Proto-Greek labiovelar in Ionic ἴκκος ("ikkos"). The genus "Equus" was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758. It is the only recognized extant genus in the family Equidae. The first equids were small, dog-sized mammals (e.g. "Eohippus") adapted for browsing on shrubs during the Eocene, around