Morphological Characters

When I speak of a character as “asinine†it must be remembered that the character in itself {{}} is not asinine. What is “asinine†is the usual association of this character to all characters usually found in extant Asses. Or, the occasional association of this bizarre character (for example the “bridge†pattern of lower cheek teeth) to all characters usually found in extant Asses.
I should speak of morph 1, or 2, or X, of the character - rather like a gene and its alleles.

Of course, all morphologies are not as clear-cut as described below; and of course, Asinine characters may occur in Hemiones, etc.

Fig. 1 is a tentative schematic representation of how I see different Equus extant species in relation to a few morphologic characters. The cylinder contains a pool of characters from which the species get their morphology.