a bull and a male donkey in ethiopia kept choosing each other. scientists wrote a paper. i wrote this.

Photo: a Pyrenean donkey in France, for illustration (not Patroclo). Jiel Beaumadier, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

via Cell Press and Them

A team from the University of Pisa went to an Ethiopian plateau to study geladas. They came back with something better for the group chat: a bull named Achille and a male donkey named Patroclo who simply would not leave each other alone.

The names are the joke and also the scholarship. Achilles and Patroclus are the pair from the Iliad that classicists have been politely arguing about for a couple of millennia.

According to the Cell Press release on the Current Biology paper, published Nov. 2, the researchers recorded 51 mountings between the two from March 6 to March 19, 2026. Patroclo did not kick, flee or protest. He "often presented his hindquarters to Achille and nipped him," which in donkey is apparently a yes. The two belonged to different owners and only met on the pasture, where both had their pick of females and of their own species. They kept picking each other.

It was not only sex. "They repeatedly chose to stay close to each other and engaged in many different affiliative behaviors, such as licking, rubbing, and nuzzling," said author André da Cruz. When Achille tried his luck with a different male donkey, twice, that donkey flattened its ears and made it very clear he was not interested. Only one of them was Patroclo.

The lead author, Martina Francesconi, said the point was that the behavior sat inside "a broader, selective social relationship" and could not be "easily explained simply by a lack of alternative mating opportunities." The team is careful not to claim to know why. One pair, two weeks, one paper. Them notes the local herders did not seem fazed, which is the most relatable part of the whole study.

We are not going to call it love, because the scientists did not. We are going to say a bull and a donkey had options and chose each other in a field in Ethiopia, and that is more commitment than most of the apps have produced this year.