Do Donkeys Really Kill More People Than Plane Crashes?

You've probably heard this one before: "More people are killed by donkeys each year than in plane crashes." It's the kind of surprising statistic that gets repeated at parties, shared on social media, and treated as quirky trivia. There's just one problem—it's completely made up.

The claim traces back to a 1987 article in the London Times that cited an unnamed "expert" with an unsubstantiated estimate. Since then, it's been repeated so many times that it's taken on a life of its own. But when researchers actually tried to verify the numbers, they hit a wall: nobody tracks donkey-related human deaths. No government agency, no international health organization, no research institution collects this data systematically.

What About Plane Crash Statistics?

Unlike donkey incidents, aviation deaths are meticulously tracked. In 2024, commercial aviation recorded 251 fatalities from seven fatal accidents worldwide, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). That's out of 40.6 million flights. While 2024 was the deadliest year since 2018, it still represents an incredibly low risk—aviation remains one of the safest forms of transportation.

The worst accident that year occurred on December 29, when a Jeju Air passenger plane crashed in South Korea, killing 179 of 181 people on board. Even with such tragic incidents, the overall safety record of commercial aviation is extraordinary.

Why This Myth Persists

The donkey claim is what's known as a "factoid"—something that sounds plausible enough to be believed but lacks any actual evidence. It plays into our cognitive biases: we're fascinated by counterintuitive facts, especially ones that make mundane things seem dangerous and scary things seem safe by comparison.

Donkeys can be dangerous—they're large animals capable of kicking with considerable force. There have been documented cases of people being killed by donkeys, including a Texas mayor who died in a rare donkey attack in 2010. But isolated incidents don't add up to a statistical trend, and certainly not one that exceeds commercial aviation fatalities.

The Real Donkey Death Toll

Ironically, while we don't have data on people killed by donkeys, we do know about donkeys killed by people: approximately 5.9 million donkeys are slaughtered annually for the skin trade to produce ejiao, a traditional Chinese medicine. That number is projected to reach 6.7 million by 2027.

So the next time someone brings up this "fact" at a dinner party, you can set the record straight. The donkey statistic isn't just wrong—it's a perfect example of how misinformation spreads when something sounds interesting enough to repeat without checking.