A chinchilla cannot take a bath. Get that coat properly wet and it stays wet, down at the skin, for a very long time — the perfect conditions for fungus.

The reason is density. Chinchillas grow dozens of hairs from a single follicle, giving them one of the densest coats of any l…

A wet donkey is not a damp horse. It's a desert animal a long way from home.

Donkeys descend from the African wild ass, an animal of dry, rocky, hot country. Horses evolved on cold grassland steppes and grew the coat to match — oily, water-shedding, built to stand out a storm. D…