The camel has his virtues—so much at least must be admitted; but they do not lie upon the surface

The camel has his virtues—so much at least must be admitted; but they do not lie upon the surface. My Buffon tells me, for instance, that he carries a fresh-water cistern in his stomach; which is meritorious. But the cistern ameliorates neither his gait nor his temper—which are abominable. Irreproachable as a beast of burden, he is open to many objections as a steed. It is unpleasant, in the first place, to ride an animal which not only objects to being ridden, but cherishes a strong personal antipathy to his rider. Such, however, is his amiable peculiarity. You know that he hates you, from the moment you first walk round him, wondering where and how to begin the ascent of his hump. He does not, in fact, hesitate to tell you so in the roundest terms. He swears freely while you are taking your seat; snarls if you but move in the saddle; and stares you angrily in the face, if you attempt to turn his head in any direction save that which he himself prefers. Should you persevere, he tries to bite your feet. If biting your feet does not answer, he lies down.

A. Edwards, A Thousand Miles Up The Nile (1877), 126

In Chinese, the word for animal is dong wu, meaning 'moving thing'

It was the sheer nonchalance of it, the way people scaled fish as though they were simply peeling potatoes, skinned live rabbits while smoking a cigarette, joking with a friend as the blood drained from the throat of a bewildered duck. They didn't kill animals before they cooked and ate them. They simply went about the process of preparing a creature for the pot and table, and at some random point it died. But there, perhaps, is the crux of the matter, embedded almost invisibly in those two sentences. In English, as in most European languages, the words for the living things we eat are mostly derived from the Latin anima, which means air, breath, life. 'Creature', from the Latin for 'created', seems to connect animals with us human beings in some divinely fashioned universe. We too are creatures, animated. In Chinese, the word for animal is dong wu, meaning 'moving thing'. Is it cruel to hurt something that (unless you are a fervent Buddhist) you see as simply a 'moving thing', scarcely even alive.

F. Dunlop, Shark's fin soup and Sichuan pepper (2008), 49

Most insects die from dehydration

Flying insects live on the edge of death every second of their short lives, the very fact that they are flying at all is a precarious balance, dependent on how hydrated they are (most insects die from dehydration) and factors like how warm they are. When the sun slips bend a cloud, insects will cool slightly, and some lose the ability to fly and drop out of the air onto the river, where a trout will be expecting them.

T. Gooley, How to read water (2016), 87

The central concern of the nation's under-eight-year-olds is hamsters

Most young children take a pretty animistic line where domestic pets are concerned. For a number of years I was one of the judging panel for the largest children's creative-writing competition in this country and came to realize that the central concern of the nation's under-eight-year-olds is hamsters. Cats and dogs came next, with budgies doing quite well also.

P. Lively, Oleander, Jacaranda (1994), 47

It is hard to domesticate an emu, and no-one ever rode a kangaroo into battle

The zoological lottery that Jared Diamond describes - the pure chance of whether your local animals can be domesticated - enormously favoured Europe and Asia. Australia, by contrast drew a very short straw. It is hard to domesticate an emu, and no-one ever rode a kangaroo into battle. The Americas were almost as badly off, but they did have the llama. Llamas cannot compete with horses for speed, or donkeys for pack power; they also have an infuriating habit, when tired, of just stopping and refusing to move. But they are extraordinarily well adapted to high altitude; they cope well with the cold and can forage for their own food; they cab provide wool, meat and manure; and, although they cannot carry people, a healthy llama can comfortably transport about 30 kilograms of goods.

N. MacGregor, A history of the world in 100 objects (2010), 403
[73: Inca gold llama]