Dr. Faith Burden

Their noses, as your other listener asked, why do they move around?

They've got really mobile muzzles, which is actually there to try and avoid the thorns and the nasty bits.

But they are really good at getting rid of what is not good for them.

Because in the desert, they don't have rich picking.

So it's not like horses on wide open plains with lots of grass.

Donkeys might have one shrub that they've got to get everything from for that day.

So they do have these lovely mobile muzzles, which do a great job of sorting out thorns and

and nasty bits of things like those cacti.

Very rarely.

They're really, really clever at finding out the bits.

And they have an incredibly powerful jaw.

If you think about the head of a donkey, it's much bigger in proportion than the head of a horse to the body.

And that's because they have a really muscled and heavy jaw to be able to eat woody plants and shrubs, not just grass.

So they love grass, don't get me wrong, but a tree or a shrub.

That's fine as well for a donkey.

That's so cool.

So they've got those front choppers, those incisors, and they're there to pinch at the grass or the tree or the bush.

But also further back, they've got the most amazing molars that grow constantly throughout their lives.

And those molars are there to grind up that wood and that grass.

So what you can see at the front is only the tip of the iceberg.