PAUL NEWMAN as Ben Quick in THE LONG, HOT SUMMER (1958) dir. Martin Ritt

I made it

Reblog for the awesome fanfic authors you know

I’m looking at you.

Gary Larson remains a fucking demigod among cartoonists

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 enduranve, 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, it's arguably the largest donkey in the world, and it's shaggy like Highland cattle), the Baudet du Pitou, 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 Pitou 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 Pitou

being on Tumblr is like playing a violin in a concert hall for thousands of people and a few of them clap, then honking a kazoo to amuse your 2 friends AND SUDDENLY YOU HAVE 20K NOTES

don't even think about it

Happy Star Wars Day! May the Fourth Be With You!

This meme is inescapable on French insta so I'm posting it here for all to enjoy

twitter has apparently unverified the pope. i need a bishop in avignon to decide to be the funniest person on the internet

That right there, I was not expecting that at all.

Omg this is it. This is what turned me old

*proceeds to shake it like a polaroid picture*

Geometry

Darth Geo'Maul'try

Legitness!!

i enjoy how they didnt over sexualize their prince costumes. like esp with jasmine. she couldve totally been in aladdin’s vest, but nope. fully clothed. thanks. 

laughing because Mulan looks the same

things i loved more then i expected, this

this is honestly one of my favorite posts ever

Meanwhile the Princes:

smoking is bad for you, kids

The foam was not as gross looking irl😂😭