Why Can't Mules Have Babies?
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Hi, this is Emily.Animals of different species rarely get it on, and when they do, they rarely produceoffspring.But even rarer than the ligers, zonkeys, camas, and beefalo of the world are hybrid animalscapable of making babies of their own.In fact, the idea of a mule – the hybrid progeny of a female horse and a male donkey– having its own baby is so implausible that the ancient Romans used to employ thesaying “when a mule foals” as a metaphor for the impossible — the same way that Americanssay “when pigs fly”, Turkish people say “when fish climb trees” and Nigerianssay “when the chicken has teeth.”Here’s why: in order to successfully reproduce, animals need to create viable sex cells.Normal body cells have two copies of each chromosome – one...
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Hi, this is Emily.Animals of different species rarely get it on, and when they do, they rarely produceoffspring.But even rarer than the ligers, zonkeys, camas, and beefalo of the world are hybrid animalscapable of making babies of their own.In fact, the idea of a mule – the hybrid progeny of a female horse and a male donkey– having its own baby is so implausible that the ancient Romans used to employ thesaying “when a mule foals” as a metaphor for the impossible — the same way that Americanssay “when pigs fly”, Turkish people say “when fish climb trees” and Nigerianssay “when the chicken has teeth.”Here’s why: in order to successfully reproduce, animals need to create viable sex cells.Normal body cells have two copies of each chromosome – one...
