all of you are little ants to me @keruwyn - Tumblr Blog

kushblazer666

4waystreet

i will be a fisherman

lakevida

goobersplat

Iridescent Grizzly Bear Stickers

(Image ID: Four bear stickers. A brown bear standing, a gold bear sitting, a gold bear standing, and a brown bear sitting.)

kalessinsdaughter

The other day, I went down the rabbit hole of "cute donkeys" and came up with my head full of things I didn't know about mules (the hybrid offspring of a horse and a donkey), and why they were once so coveted as work animals.

Brace for info dump, while enjoying this lovely photo of a trio of draft mules.

The explanation is hybrid vigour (when hybrid offspring have enhanced traits compared to its parents):

Mules are stronger, hardier, healthier, have better endurance, harder hooves, sturdier skin and can handle extreme weather better than horses or donkeys. They are also more patient, more intelligent, and easier to handle than either of their parent species. Horses may be faster, but that's about the single thing they're better at than a mule of the same size.

So mules, being all around nicer to work with and getting you more work for the same amount of feed, and with less hassle, were preferred for just about every job purpose.

Habby du Magnou, a Poitevin Mulassier mare, and her daughter Lady du Magnou, a rare Poitevin mule

But since horses have 64 chromosomes and donkeys have 62, mules end up with 63 chromosomes, which means they are almost invariably sterile. That's because biology gets very confused when trying to split an uneven number of chromosomes neatly in half to create germ cells. There are a few documented exceptions of fertile mule mares (never stallions), but they are very, very rare. So you have to keep crossbreeding the two parent species to produce them, usually by breeding a donkey sire (jack) to a horse dam (mare). This is because it's easier for a 32 chromosome egg to incorporate a 31 chromosome sperm into a viable zygote (fertilised egg) than vice versa.

Because of this, there was (and still is) in France a breed of absolutely massive draft horses, the Poitevin Mulassier, and a breed of big-ass donkeys (pun intended, but honestly they're arguably the largest donkeys in the world, and shaggy like Highland cattle), the Baudet du Poitou, two breeds whose main purpose was to breed the enormous and super-strong Poitevin mule.

The Poitevin mule

This absolute unit was the must-have work-animal for all kinds of farm and industrial work for centuries, and a significant French export, until mechanisation made these magnificent creatures obsolete.

With no demand for the Poitevin mule , its parent breeds dwindled, almost to the brink of extinction. Determined conservation efforts during the last few decades are slowly bringing their numbers back up, but they're very far from their heyday, when some 20,000 Poitevin mules were born annually.

The Poitevin Mulassier

Both the parent breeds are still endangered, which means most of the current effort is directed into bringing up the numbers of Poitevin horses and Poitou donkeys. This means breeding horses to horses and donkeys to donkeys, with very few breeding opportunities allowed to produce the Poitevin mule. Only about 20 of those are born each year.

The Baudet du Poitou

hungwy

you will hear me sharpening my axe at all times

hungwy

you will see my vengeful gaze as you walk by my workshop one cold and foggy afternoon in our hamlet and i will not stop sharpening my axe on my grindstone and when you go home later that night you will think of your deeds and the evils youve conjured and listen to the grinding of my axe and you will not sleep well

hjartasalt

Thinking about 13 Latvias again

hjartasalt

I genuinely belive this is the funniest fucking thing we will ever get from reddit

hjartasalt

I need you all to know that I think about 13 Latvias so much that now every time I meet someone from Latvia I have to resist the urge to ask "which one"

hjartasalt

In the Latviaverse this is just a normal map

70sscifiart

Robert McCall, ‘Island Shrine,’ 1982

milk5

You have been brought before the ORC BOYAR.

The ORC BOYAR seeks entertainment; perhaps this will be your chance to impress the ORC BOYAR?

Perform a dance for the ORC BOYAR by selecting two DESCRIPTORS of the ORC BOYAR's liking.

You perform a BONE MUSHROOM dance.