Donkey; the story of the ass from east to west, Quotes

“Quite early in the long march Moses brought down from the peak of Mount Sinai the code of Laws in ten sections which were specially framed to regulate the life of a people perpetually on the move, and of these commandments the one about covetousness is significant. Not to be coveted were the neighbour's ox, and his ass; and that is all the livestock specifically mentioned, presumably to stand for the two most valuable kinds. There were no horses and no camels.”
― Anthony Austen Dent, Donkey; the story of the ass from east to west,

“As mentioned earlier, the ass is a contrary beast, in that it chooses to upset some general zoological rules. For instance, as a general rule, the bigger an animal, the longer the gestation period. In the whale and the elephant it is a matter of years, in the rat it is a matter of weeks, and so on. Yet the ass, which is smaller than the cow or the horse, carries its foal one month longer than does the mare, and three months longer than the cow carries her calf. Mountain races tend to have shorter legs, and cold-dwelling races shorter extremities of all kinds than their near relations on the plains and in warm climates respectively. Typical cold-dwellers have chunky figures (polar bear, musk-ox, seal), typical hot-dwellers long, thin legs (gazelle, antelope). But we have seen that the kiang—which not only lives at a higher altitude but in a colder winter climate than any other wild ass—is higher on the leg than any other of its relatives. But in the matter of ears the ass conforms. The long, trumpet-like ears of the African ass have no acoustic advantage over the shorter, blunter, horse-type ears of the onager, nor do the conditions of life in the two continents make acute hearing any more important in the one than in the other. But then many desert and other hot-zone dwellers have large ears (the object of which is not the better to hear you with, my dear!). Outside the desert, the elephant. In the desert itself, the jerboa or desert rat and the fennec or desert fox. The whole conformation of desert animals is calculated to present the largest possible surface in relation to the total size, and if possible to afford maximum room for sweat glands. This is an aid to cooling by evaporation, and the larger ears of the Nubian ass probably serve the same purpose as the flanges on a motor-cycle engine or on the barrel casing of such machine-guns as the Lewis and the Hotchkiss, which are air-cooled.”
― Anthony Austen Dent, Donkey; the story of the ass from east to west,