If you google that passage, or anything related to páramo woollies, they just don't seem to exist, at all. There's one page that copy and pastes the above paragraph word for word, but it was published in 2015. So it also just scrubbed info from the aforementioned blog that seems to be run by a random person with no sources or expertise at all... Okay. Kept digging.

this page cites the pictured donkey as a woolly páramo donkey, except, that is in Ireland. not anywhere near páramo! (and sure, exporting animals is a Thing, but...the caption says its a subspecies of the paramo donkeys???!)

(and, for the record, were going with the wiki's definition of paramo here: "A narrower term classifies the páramo according to its regional placement in the northern Andes of South America and adjacent southern Central America.") So we're looking for donkeys around there. 

The english wikipedia page for Páramo (region) does not include ANYTHING about donkeys. And if it was an endangered species, wouldn't it be notable? However, the image the first blog uses...IS on wikipedia, and is cited. As being taken in 2007, possibly one of the earliest pics of said donkey type, and was in Chimborazo, Ecuador which IS in the Paramo ecosystem. THERE'S DONKEYS THERE. I knew that from looking up travel iteraries around Columbia's paramo. 

I then discovered: The guy who's credited with the photo  has scientific papers out about the paramo region! But...you to request access to them, and most of them are in spanish, and who knows if they mention donkeys at all or the guy just put pics of them on wikipedia to be nice. like, I know donkeys do live there, but it doesn't seem to be a specific species, more like this is 'a woolly donkey of the paramo region' from the translation of the title of the photo. woolly donkeys can be anywhere! (LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!!!)

I went looking into woolly donkeys alone, which I KNOW are a thing, this page cites the miniature woolly variation as rare, saying there are only 400-ish in the US. cool, that's a rare breed, if true. Different from being an endangered species, though!!! And that linked page is from a breeder with no cited sources, and their last news update was...2019.

the smithsonian estimates miniature donkeys in general to at 10,000-20,000, so 400 of those being woolly seems to be..lowballing the amount of woollies? possibly? seems very low for something with high cuteness appeal that would be a hit at fairs, competitions, or petting zoos. But if true thats at least...a rare breed... which is something...

(there are Poitou donkeys, if nothing else, which are confirmed to be a Thing. They are woolly, and endangered. If I was going to change her to any other donkey, this would be it. its not on the red data list, but it is on the FAO endangered list, which is like. close enough?)

Just when I thought 'this thing isn't real, oh god I might have to pick a new donkey for Mira.....' I Found it. Sort of. In somewhere unexpected.

A blog post about farmville 2. Yeah the old facebook game! why is it here?! The game came out in 2012, so it had to be pulling the name from an earlier source, and was not where the blogs were getting their info (and thank god for that) but...even looking into reputable sources for THAT is hard to find?! its not on the farmville 2 wiki. There's other species of donkey on the game, but none matching these low res pics that pop up on random cheatcode blogs when I look for possible sources?

Both of these images/img descriptions call it the woolly paramo donkey. and seem to be reasonably well rendered, and can be found across a few other farmville 2 blogs/guides... (the first image being a baby, the scond being adult version) I can't really imagine people who play farmville going to the effort to photoshop fake upgrades in 2012 for farmville 2... but its not on the fan wiki, which usually cite their sources. I am not playing farmville 2 to investigate this further, but its WEIRD! Doubly so since farmville does have woolly donkeys, and the above are NOT just colorovers of them! ...Where was farmville drawing the "woolly paramo donkey" name from?!

Anyway, enough about farmville it really isnt THAT important but it blows my mind the name woolly paramo donkey slipped into there somehow. how. who. AND its supposedly in a game called 'island paradise' but I couldn't find pictures of it. but its got its own wiki fan page as well...??

Getting back to the actual research, here's a map of where the paramo ecosystem is. and a map from 2018 on a reputable government website regarding donkey populations. (most recent study I could find, unfortunately!) there could very well be an endangered or at least rare subspecies/breed of donkey around there!

^{(by the way, there ARE woolly MONKEYS around the area. surely no one with dyslexia like me read monkeys as donkeys and ran with it right. RIGHT.)}

but...there's not one listed under the red data list's website under the name paramo or even any woollies. tbf, the red data website is moreso for wild animals, rather than rare domestic breeds). so I thought, time to try something else. I checked for endangered south american donkeys in general. narrowed it down by possible countries. I checked every search engine I have bookmarked, including one that searches for scientific articles/books exclusively. I checked the dang wikipedia list of donkeys. (which, by the way? severely lacking info in general.)

NOTHING. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE WOOLLY PARAMO DONKEY BREED, EXCEPT CITED ON THOSE RANDOM BLOGS, AND THAT SINGLE WIKIPEDIA PHOTO. unless...the region it would be in would be spanish-speaking.... I thought, there MIGHT be websites on it that I can't even read or find because I'm not using the right terms... I tried a few words for donkey (burro, burra, burrico,) paired with paramo, and I just kept getting a book result. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo. Not related at all, sadly, just includes a donkey in the story and the word paramo in the title.

I guess u could say the woolly paramo donkey was just a mirage? :) (loud booing)

At this point I was pretty convinced: the breed is most likely not real, or if they are, not documented online. from what I can tell, it seems to just be that woolly donkeys in general are rare, and while they do live in that area, are not proper endangered animals/species if we want to get hung up on semantics.

but I'm not changing it for the comic. having her be a (possibly) fake donkey breed is objectively kind of funny, and it was already mentioned in chapter 1!

unless shirogane has decoy DNAs in the event of a break in and that was one of them. oops, all placebo. her mew power comes from, like, the power of belief or whatever. joke joke joke this is not lore its a joke

You'd assume that would be the end of it: but NO. I needed to know. I was too deep into donkey research. I had a nap, then documented the nap on tumblr too: it was a dream I was in a stormy field with donkeys and horses. Brain said you can NOT rest until you know. 

 So, like a normal person does, I went through the scientific articles that the guy who published the very earliest pic of the donkey on wiki wrote. Found his email there. Shot him an email with questions. The article is from a few years ago, so I wasn't  sure if that was even an active means of contact for him. He has a lot of articles about the Páramo ecosystem/area/conservation efforts so I waited, anxiously, fingers crossed. Even if he wasn't sure, he might have been able to direct me to someone who does, right?

 

To clarify: donkeys are for sure a thing in the area. AND WOOLLY donkeys are a Thing in Páramo (and other areas, but this is the place we are looking at with Big Eyes Specifically)

(from here and here, peep the captions/locations!)

what I was trying to figure out was if the "Páramo woolly donkey" is somehow 1. a distinct species from other woolly donkeys? 2. endangered? like, the first blog claims both of these things.

BUT WE GOT AN ANSWER FROM MR. VÁSCONEZ, SO I DON'T NEED TO WONDER ANY LONGER. This is the very prompt, very nice response he sent to me after I emailed him:

transcript: "Hello, thank you for the question. I am not a specialist in donkeys (or any animal) and more a scholar of the paramo ecosystem in general, but I know that donkeys belong to a single species with several varieties or subspecies. Maybe the páramo woolly donkey is a subspecies but I have never heard of it. It is rather a descriptive name for donkeys that live in the high Andes and have a heavy coat. Of course, they are not a native páramo species. 

As for their conservation status, I don't think there are any studies on that but I can say with some certainty that they have become increasingly rare with the passage of time and the lack of need to use them in the field. I do know that donkeys in Spain, for example, are indeed threatened. Nowadays it is quite surprising and rare to come across such a cute image as the one in my photo. The information in the link you sent seems interesting but not particularly rigorous in scientific terms."

 

So when the first blog of this post states: "Another endangered species of donkey is the Woolly Paramo Donkey. It can be found in high elevations of up to 3,000 m altitude and the permanent snow line of about 5,000 meters. It can be found in Colombia." ...

Totally wrong. They just made that up, and I might be the first person ever to try and fact check them.

It's likely not its own subspecies distinct from other woollies. It is rare! No studies on the conservation status! In theory, COULD be threatened. And it seems like no one knows the exact number of woolly type donkeys, because it seems like no one I could find is studying woollies-- and not just in that area specially. Some breeders cite them at 400~ish in the US, but, again, those breeders haven't posted in 5+ years and don't cite any studies for woollies, specifically. SO. It is a very foggy area scientifically speaking.

from the guy who first posted anything online with the term himself though: Woolly Paramo donkey = a descriptor for the coat type and location, and not a breed, or subspecies.

from me: my magical girl webcomic fanfiction = researched, found 2 be inaccurate. 

...I guess tm2 now takes place in an AU where woollies are more studied, and there is a recognized páramo subspecies. Which is really funny. Nowadays I just say her animal is a 'wooly donkey'. Shoutout to 17 year old me, for believing every animal fact blog they come across. The moral of this story: do your research, kids. ✌️😔 Actually... this is a great time for me to suggest you actually look up donkey behaviors and fun facts! It might just make some of Mira's actions make more sense going forward ;)

 

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General news and my recent art agenda:

Trying to get as many comic pages done as possible so I can do art fight again this year! Ideally, I'd like to only do artfight in July, without worrying about making more pages, so expect a big backlog to hit kofi between now and then (I post them as I finish them there, so we're a bit ahead of the 'weekly page' I do here!) 

I also want to finish the new ref sheets for the minor characters and Queen's Cacti council so that's going on behind the scenes!

The DTIYS I mentioned in the last post is still ongoing and will be until May 30th; I plan to get all the prizes for that done at least by the second week of June (I'll be out of state the first week, though that shouldn't affect the comic schedule in any way- the hotel I'll be at will have wifi I assume?) unless I just get a crazy amount of last minute entries that makes those prizes take a while! Thanks to everyone who already sent in beautiful peices!! I am excited to feature them in June! <3

Content for Entry 3

Content for Entry 4

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