What a mascot leaves out

A mascot is a choice about what to emphasize.

An elephant on a poster is chosen for size and steadiness, not for the weeks when a bull elephant in musth becomes dangerous to the people around him. A donkey is drawn to suggest endurance or stubbornness, depending on who holds the pen, and the drawing rarely mentions what a donkey's stillness usually means. Our own dolphin was chosen for cooperation, and it would be easy to let the same flattering silence protect it.

This page refuses that silence for all three animals, including ours. Each one gets the same five part treatment:

1. Meanings people attach. These are cultural interpretations, labeled as such. They are not findings.
2. Documented social behavior, including cooperation where the evidence supports it.
3. Documented aggression or risks, with context and limits.
4. A common misconception, and what the evidence actually establishes.
5. Sources, species, setting and uncertainty.

The same standard does not mean the same severity, the same frequency, or the same number of words. The animals are different, and so is the amount of research on each. There is no score, no ranking and no winner here. We do not compare attack rates across species, because the sources do not provide compatible counts with comparable denominators. And nothing on this page says that a political party, its members or its voters share the behavior of the animal on its emblem. Animals do not inherit politics, and people do not inherit animal behavior.

Setting and species

"Dolphin," "elephant" and "donkey" each name more than one kind of animal, so we say which one we mean:

• Dolphin: bottlenose dolphins. The research cited here concerns the common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) and, in Shark Bay, Western Australia, the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops aduncus) pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.govdoi.orgpmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.govpmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
• Elephant: the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). African elephants belong to a different genus, Loxodonta, and differ in social structure; the Smithsonian's National Zoo notes, for example, that Asian elephant herds, "unlike African elephants," do not have a matriarch nationalzoo.si.edu. We do not apply Asian elephant findings to African elephants.
• Donkey: Equus asinus, mainly domestic donkeys, with notes on behavior in natural, free-living conditions where the sources describe it food.ec.europa.eu.

Settings vary just as much. Several of the cooperation findings come from animals in human care. Several of the risk findings come from handling and management guidance written for people who work with these animals. We name the setting every time.

The dolphin: bottlenose dolphins

1. Meanings people attach (cultural interpretation)

People commonly read dolphins as friendly, playful, intelligent and gentle, and often read the shape of the face as a smile. This project reads the dolphin as a symbol of cooperation. Those are human meanings. They are not evidence about dolphins.

2. Documented social behavior

In a captive experiment in Florida, four common bottlenose dolphins in two pairs learned to press underwater buttons within a second of each other, even when one partner was released up to 20 seconds after the other; the authors concluded the dolphins could learn their partner's role pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. In the wild, in Shark Bay, male Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins form alliances at three levels; an analysis of 121 adult males found what the authors call "the largest nonhuman alliance network known" doi.org. NOAA Fisheries describes groups herding fish together and taking turns feeding fisheries.noaa.gov.

3. Documented aggression and risks

The Shark Bay alliances exist to compete over females. Pairs and trios of allied males maintain associations with individual females through "vocal and physical threats," which researchers classify as coercive mate guarding, "a form of sexual coercion" pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Post mortem studies in Scotland found that five of eight young calves examined from one area had been killed by bottlenose dolphins, and that most harbor porpoises found dead on that coast showed signs of attack by them pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. NOAA Fisheries reports dozens of bites to people and people pulled underwater, and advises against feeding, swimming with or harassing wild dolphins fisheries.noaa.gov. The full record, with every population and sample size, is in The whole record.

4. A common misconception

The misconception: wild dolphins are friendly to people. What the evidence establishes: NOAA calls the friendly wild dolphin a myth, noting that the television dolphin Flipper was a trained captive animal, and states that wild dolphins bite fisheries.noaa.gov. Some wild dolphins approach people; that is not the same as being safe to approach.

5. Sources, species, setting and uncertainty

The cooperation experiment is captive, with four animals pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. The alliance and coercion findings are from one wild population of a different bottlenose species doi.orgpmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. The calf and porpoise findings are mostly forensic inferences from stranded animals in one region, reported here from the study's abstract pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. None of these findings describes all dolphins.

The elephant: Asian elephants

1. Meanings people attach (cultural interpretation)

People commonly read elephants as strong, steady, wise, loyal to family and long in memory. In United States politics the elephant is also used as a party emblem; the history of that emblem is told in our symbols chapters, not here. These are human meanings, not findings about elephants.

2. Documented social behavior

The Smithsonian's National Zoo describes Asian elephants as typically living "in small herds of related females, their female offspring and immature males," with females "working together to raise their young and to protect the group" nationalzoo.si.edu. When a threat appears, older members of the herd give warning calls that prompt the rest to "clump together for protection" nationalzoo.si.edu. Males leave the herd at puberty, between about 8 and 13 years old nationalzoo.si.edu.

Cooperation has also been tested experimentally. In a study by Joshua Plotnik and colleagues, Asian elephants learned to coordinate with a partner to pull two ends of the same rope at once, and held back from pulling for up to 45 seconds when a partner's arrival was delayed pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. They also "grasped that there was no point to pulling if the partner lacked access to the rope" pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

A second study by Plotnik and Frans de Waal followed 26 captive Asian elephants, aged roughly 3 to 60, at the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai province, Thailand, from April 2008 to February 2009 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. After an elephant showed signs of distress, others affiliated with it significantly more, through directed physical contact and vocal communication, than in control periods. The authors classify this with consolation responses in great apes, while acknowledging that most distress events were triggered by ambiguous stimuli, which makes it hard to know whether bystanders were responding to the distressed elephant or to the same stimulus pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

The IUCN SSC Asian Elephant Specialist Group adds that, "contrary to long-standing perceptions," wild bulls "often seek the company of other elephants, and not just for breeding," and that young males are drawn to older bulls, "who teach them important social skills" asesg.org.

3. Documented aggression and risks

Musth. Musth is a periodic state in adult male elephants marked by swelling and secretion of the temporal glands, urine dribbling and elevated androgens such as testosterone asesg.org. The Asian Elephant Specialist Group's 2022 guidelines on captive bulls describe it as "a natural phenomenon in healthy male elephants" and "generally considered a sign of good health" asesg.org. They also state plainly that "bulls in musth often are unpredictable and can become aggressive" asesg.org. The listed signs include "increased aggression to humans and other elephants" asesg.org. In full musth, androgen levels can rise to 10 to 20 times baseline, and "many, though not all, males become more disobedient, unpredictable and highly aggressive" asesg.org. The guidelines warn that "many killings by captive bulls occur during the post musth period, within 2 weeks after musth signs disappear" asesg.org.

Context matters. In the wild, musth generally occurs in bulls over about 25 years old and lasts about 30 to 45 days in dominant bulls; in captivity it can begin as young as 7 and average two to three months or more asesg.org. The same guidelines say that captive conditions, including short tethers, social isolation and lack of access to fresh food and clean water, "exacerbate frustration and aggressive behaviors," and that in the wild, bulls in musth "can be aggressive and cause extensive damage to property, as well as being a threat to other elephants and humans" asesg.org. Some bulls remain manageable in musth asesg.org. The aggression is real; its intensity depends on the individual and on how people keep him.

Conflict with people. The National Zoo reports that Asian elephants are considered a pest and a danger in agricultural areas, that crop raiding "can lead to elephant deaths, as well as human deaths," and that experts consider such confrontations "the leading cause of elephant deaths in Asia" nationalzoo.si.edu. We do not publish a count of human deaths from elephants, because we have not yet verified a figure with a clear source, place, period and denominator.

4. A common misconception

The misconception: bull elephants are naturally solitary and always aggressive. What the evidence establishes: the Asian Elephant Specialist Group writes that "contrary to long-standing perceptions, wild bulls are not always aggressive towards each other, nor are they always solitary" asesg.org. Aggression in bulls is concentrated around musth and is made worse by restrictive captive conditions asesg.org. A related caution comes from the elephant cooperation researchers themselves, who wrote in 2011 that elephants "are widely assumed to be among the most cognitively advanced animals, even though systematic evidence is lacking" pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Admiration is not evidence, for elephants or for dolphins.

5. Sources, species, setting and uncertainty

All findings here concern Asian elephants. The musth guidance is written for the management of captive bulls, though it also describes wild behavior asesg.org. The consolation study used 26 captive elephants at one park in Thailand pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. For the rope study we have read only the abstract, which does not give the setting or sample size, so we report neither pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. The National Zoo page is an institutional summary rather than a research paper nationalzoo.si.edu. We have not covered African elephants.

The donkey: Equus asinus

1. Meanings people attach (cultural interpretation)

People commonly read donkeys as stubborn, humble, patient and hard working. In United States politics the donkey is also used as a party emblem; its history is told in our symbols chapters. These are human meanings, and one of them, "stubborn," is examined below as a misconception.

2. Documented social behavior

A guide to donkey welfare produced under the EU Platform on Animal Welfare reports that "donkeys frequently form very strong pair bonds, which may last a lifetime," and that separating bonded donkeys "can seriously compromise welfare" food.ec.europa.eu. Donkeys are socially flexible: in resource poor natural environments they may live in small groups, pairs or alone, while domestic donkeys can form herds of more than 20 when resources allow food.ec.europa.eu. Social contact with other donkeys makes social grooming possible, and the guide recommends that domestic donkeys have direct contact with their own species for most of the day food.ec.europa.eu. A veterinary review notes that donkeys and mules "form strong bonds and trust with familiar people and other equids" doi.org. In a mixed group of 16 mules, donkeys and ponies observed for 70 hours, the donkeys preferred the company of other donkeys and ranked lowest in the group's dominance order doi.org.

Donkeys are also used to protect sheep and goats. The Texas Department of Agriculture describes guard donkeys as drawing on herding instincts and the "natural dislike and aggressiveness of some donkeys toward dogs and coyotes" texasagriculture.gov. Here a defensive response becomes useful to people.

3. Documented aggression and risks

Donkeys have both flight and fight responses, but because they "are not so swift as horses," fleeing is often not their best defense, and "fight behaviours are therefore more strongly established in donkeys than in horses" food.ec.europa.eu. Touch between donkeys can be friendly, as in grooming, or aggressive, as in "kicking and biting" food.ec.europa.eu. The guide warns that this fight response can be directed at small livestock, dogs, cats or wildlife that enter a donkey's space, and that handlers should not mistake alert behaviors for friendliness toward another species food.ec.europa.eu.

With people, risk depends heavily on handling. Donkeys "could display fear reactions if not used to human contact and restraint," and if they meet people only in stressful or painful situations, such as veterinary visits, dentistry or hoof care, "they may display dangerous reactions" food.ec.europa.eu. Rough or inconsistent training "may also lead to aggressive or conflict behaviour, which may compromise the safety of those handling the donkey" food.ec.europa.eu.

Pain is a hidden part of this picture. The same guide describes donkeys as stoic, a typical predator avoidance behavior in a prey species, and stresses that this masking "should not be (mis)interpreted as a lessened ability to experience pain and distress" food.ec.europa.eu. Veterinary researchers who built a pain scale for donkeys note that their stoic behavior, "characterized by a lack of a clear expression of pain," makes painful conditions hard to recognize pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. A donkey that bites or kicks during handling may be afraid or in pain.

We found no source that gives a rate of injuries to people from donkeys with a usable denominator, so we do not estimate one.

4. A common misconception

The misconception: donkeys are stubborn. What the evidence establishes: the EU welfare guide states that "the donkey has a reputation for being stubborn and unwilling. This is often because the donkey shows reluctance without displaying the body language of the horse or pony. The actual cause of the behaviour is more likely to be fear, pain, lack of motivation or clarity of instruction rather than stubbornness" food.ec.europa.eu. "Stubborn" is a human label for reluctance that, according to this guidance, more often reflects fear, pain, lack of motivation or unclear instruction. It is not a scientific finding, and it is not evidence that donkeys lack intelligence.

5. Sources, species, setting and uncertainty

The main source for donkey behavior is a welfare practice guide produced in 2018 and 2019 by a voluntary group under the EU Platform on Animal Welfare; it states that its positions do not necessarily represent the official position of the European Commission food.ec.europa.eu. It is guidance informed by research and practice, not a primary study. The social behavior findings come from domestic donkeys, including one observational study of a single mixed group doi.org. The guarding description is from a state agency page texasagriculture.gov. We have read two of the donkey sources only in abstract doi.orgdoi.org.

Same standard, different animals

Read side by side, the three records share a pattern. Each animal shows cooperation or strong social bonds that people admire: allied dolphins, elephant herds that close ranks and console, donkeys that pair for life. Each also shows aggression with a context: dolphins competing over mates and attacking smaller animals, elephant bulls in musth, donkeys defending themselves or their space when frightened or in pain. And each carries a popular image that the evidence corrects: the friendly dolphin, the always aggressive bull, the stubborn donkey.

That is as far as the comparison goes. The behaviors differ in kind, in frequency and in how well they are studied. A coercive alliance in one bay, a musth bull in a camp and a frightened donkey at the farrier are not the same event, and we will not pretend they can be weighed on one scale.

Evidence

Animal and species	Cooperation or social bond	Aggression or risk	Misconception examined	Main setting of evidence
Bottlenose dolphins (T. truncatus, T. aduncus)	Coordinated button task; three level male alliances pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.govdoi.org	Coercive mate guarding; calf and porpoise deaths; bites to people pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.govpmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.govfisheries.noaa.gov	"Wild dolphins are friendly" fisheries.noaa.gov	Captive experiment; one wild population; stranded animals
Asian elephant (Elephas maximus)	Family herds; rope task; post distress affiliation nationalzoo.si.edupmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.govpmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov	Musth aggression; conflict with people nationalzoo.si.eduasesg.org	"Bulls are always aggressive and solitary" asesg.org	Captive bulls and captive camps; institutional summaries
Donkey (Equus asinus)	Lifelong pair bonds; bonds with familiar people food.ec.europa.eudoi.org	Fight response; kicking and biting in fear, pain or rough handling food.ec.europa.eu	"Donkeys are stubborn" food.ec.europa.eu	Domestic donkeys; welfare guidance

What the evidence does not show

• It does not rank the animals. There is no virtue score, no severity score and no winner.
• It does not compare how often each animal harms people. The sources do not give compatible counts with comparable denominators.
• It does not show that every member of a species behaves the same way. Each finding is tied to a species, a setting and, where possible, a population.
• It does not show motive. Where researchers propose a reason for a behavior, we label it as a proposal.
• It does not say anything about political parties, their members or their voters. No party inherits its mascot's behavior.

The dolphin receives the same scrutiny here as the established mascots. Our choice of cooperation is a human value.

Sources

1. Jaakkola K, Guarino E, Donegan K, King SL, "Bottlenose dolphins can understand their partner's role in a cooperative task," Proceedings of the Royal Society B 285(1887): 20180948, 2018. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (locator: Methods; Results; Discussion). Accessed 2026-10-28. (full text reviewed)
2. Connor RC, Krützen M, Allen SJ, Sherwin WB, King SL, "Strategic intergroup alliances increase access to a contested resource in male bottlenose dolphins," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119(36): e2121723119, 2022. doi.org (full text read at pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov; locator: Abstract; Introduction). Accessed 2026-10-28. (full text reviewed)
3. King SL, Allen SJ, Krützen M, Connor RC, "Vocal behaviour of allied male dolphins during cooperative mate guarding," Animal Cognition 22: 991 to 1000, 2019. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (locator: Abstract; Methods, Behavioural data). Accessed 2026-10-28. (full text reviewed)
4. Patterson IAP, Reid RJ, Wilson B, Grellier K, Ross HM, Thompson PM, "Evidence for infanticide in bottlenose dolphins: an explanation for violent interactions with harbour porpoises?" Proceedings of the Royal Society B 265(1402): 1167 to 1170, 1998. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (locator: Abstract). Accessed 2026-10-28. (abstract only)
5. NOAA Fisheries, "Protect Wild Dolphins: Admire Them from a Distance," last updated October 3, 2023. fisheries.noaa.gov (locator: full page). Accessed 2026-10-28. (full text reviewed)
6. Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, "Asian elephant." nationalzoo.si.edu (locator: Social Structure; Communication; Reproduction and Development; Conservation Efforts). Accessed 2026-10-28. (full text reviewed)
7. Brown J, Corea R, Dangolla A, Easwaran EK, Mikota S, Oo ZM, Sarma K, Thitaram C, Schmitt D, Stremme C, "AsESG Guidelines on management of captive elephants in musth" (cover title: "Guidelines on management and care of captive Elephant bulls in Musth"), IUCN SSC Asian Elephant Specialist Group, 2022. asesg.org (locator: Introduction, p. 2; Biology of Musth and Signs of Musth, pp. 3 to 4; Stages of Musth, pp. 4 to 5; Factors Associated with Musth, p. 5). Accessed 2026-10-28. (full text reviewed)
8. Plotnik JM, Lair R, Suphachoksahakun W, de Waal FBM, "Elephants know when they need a helping trunk in a cooperative task," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108(12): 5116 to 5121, 2011. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (locator: Abstract). Accessed 2026-10-28. (abstract only)
9. Plotnik JM, de Waal FBM, "Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) reassure others in distress," PeerJ 2: e278, 2014. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (locator: Abstract; Materials and methods, Study area and subjects; Discussion). Accessed 2026-10-28. (full text reviewed)
10. EU Platform on Animal Welfare, voluntary initiative group on equines, "Guide to good animal welfare practice for the keeping, care, training and use of donkeys and donkey hybrids," DOC/11066/2020, produced 2018 to 2019. food.ec.europa.eu (locator: 3.3 Flight and fight reaction, pp. 8 to 9; 3.5 Social interaction, p. 9; 3.7 Stoic and abnormal behaviours, pp. 11 to 12; 4.1 and 4.2, pp. 12 to 13; 8 Handling and training, p. 21). Accessed 2026-10-28. (full text reviewed)
11. McLean AK, Navas González FJ, Canisso IF, "Donkey and Mule Behavior," Veterinary Clinics of North America: Equine Practice 35(3): 575 to 588, 2019. doi.org (locator: Abstract, via PubMed 31672203). Accessed 2026-10-28. (abstract only)
12. NOAA Fisheries, "Common Bottlenose Dolphin," species page, last updated September 1, 2026. fisheries.noaa.gov (locator: diet and behavior sections). Accessed 2026-10-28. (full text reviewed)
13. Proops L, Burden F, Osthaus B, "Social relations in a mixed group of mules, ponies and donkeys reflect differences in equid type," Behavioural Processes 90(3): 337 to 342, 2012. doi.org (locator: Abstract, via PubMed 22709577). Accessed 2026-10-28. (abstract only)
14. Texas Department of Agriculture, "Guard Donkeys," Predator Management Training Program. texasagriculture.gov (locator: full page). Accessed 2026-10-28. (full text reviewed)
15. de Oliveira MGC, de Paula VV, Mouta AN, Lima IO, de Macêdo LB, Nunes TL, Trindade PHE, Luna SPL, "Validation of the Donkey Pain Scale (DOPS) for Assessing Postoperative Pain in Donkeys," Frontiers in Veterinary Science 8: 671330, 2021. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (locator: Introduction, paragraph 1). Accessed 2026-10-28. (full text reviewed)

Last checked against its sources on October 28, 2026. Report a correction.