livalivs

when you're a child and you stay up past your bedtime you get punished by your parents, when you're an adult and you stay up too late you just get punished by the ghosts and spirits and demons and such

#too true

livalivs

aroacevaljean

skajador

really enjoying the wave of tags I’m getting as September 1st dawns across the world of when people scheduled this last year… love you all

livalivs

chicka-vakarian

spicymochi

he has a flower for you!

livalivs

chicka-vakarian

raccoonspooky

Fuck a personality test. Which label sticker r u?

livalivs

chicka-vakarian

dormouseking

i told my friend’s dad that he was hot (it was in context with the conversation, he was complaining that he was feeling old, etc), and he said a very genuine thank you and the conversation moved on to other topic, my friend was now talking about something else entirely when his dad goes

“i think if i were born in your generation i might have been bisexual”

and friend got kinda mad at me lmao

that-twink-over-there

Fuck his dad

huffy-the-bicycle-slayer

Happy "Fuck Your Friend's Dad Friday" Monday

livalivs

flightyfinch

citystompers1

Behind the scenes of Godzilla (1998)

memebf

man why didn’t they just have this guy fight him off. dude’s huge

sigmaleph

i wouldn't fight godzilla if i was this dude's size, for roughly the same reason i wouldn't fight a komodo dragon at the size i currently am

squareallworthy

Not even to save New York?

sigmaleph

what has new york ever done for me

livalivs

scoutingthetrooper

mark ferrari

livalivs

lunarity2013

slitherpunk

you heathens will reblog day specific posts any day of the week. i woke up thinking it was wednesday

arcnoise

happy wake up thinking it was wednesday sunday

wizard-email

it's fucking friday

livalivs

livalivs

livalivs

The EU is doing a big survey for LGBTQ people who live in the EU about how it is for them right now. That's the kind of survey that's used for official reports and for laws so it's super important that it has as many people taking it as possible. You can take it in every EU language. (You can change the language in the top right corner) Share it with your friends!

https://www.lgbtiqsurvey.eu/lgbtiq

livalivs

livalivs

livalivs

livalivs

livalivs

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.

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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

www.mulassier-poitevin.com

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

ekladata.com

www.territoiredemotions.fr

upload.wikimedia.org

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

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www.mulassier-poitevin.com

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