: 37 A mule has the thin limbs, small narrow hooves and short mane of the donkey, while its height, the shape of the neck and body, the uniformity of its coat and its teeth are more similar to those of the horse. : 36 A mule is generally larger than a hinny, with longer ears and a heavier head the tail is usually covered with long hair like that of its mare mother. In general terms, in both the mule and the hinny, the foreparts and head of the animal are similar to those of the sire ("father"), while the hindparts and tail tend to resemble those of the dam ("mother"). : 2924 Characteristics Loading mules, from Eleven Years in the Rocky Mountains and a Life on the Frontier by Frances Fuller Victor, 1887 : 2924 Neither an equid nor a hybrid animal had been cloned before. On Idaho Gem, a mule foal cloned by nuclear transfer of cells from foetal material, was born at the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho. The use of mules for farming and for transportation of agricultural products largely gave way to steam-, then diesel-powered, tractors and lorries. In the second half of the twentieth century, widespread use of mules declined in industrialised countries. Mules were used by armies to transport supplies, occasionally as mobile firing platforms for smaller cannons, and to pull heavier field guns with wheels over mountainous trails such as in Afghanistan during the Second Anglo-Afghan War. The wagons were among the largest ever pulled by draught animals, designed to carry 10 short tons (9 metric tons) of borax ore at a time. At the time, they were not common in the United States, but Washington understood their value, as they were "more docile than donkeys and cheap to maintain." In the nineteenth century, they were used in various capacities as draught animals – on farms, especially where clay made the soil slippery and sticky pulling canal boats and famously for pulling, often in teams of 20 or more animals, wagonloads of borax out of Death Valley, California from 1883 to 1889. George Washington bred mules at his Mount Vernon home. Mule and Ass by Hendrik Goltzius or Hieronymus Wierix, 1578 Ĭhristopher Columbus allegedly brought mules to the New World. Homer noted their arrival in Asia Minor in the Iliad in 800 BC. Among the bas-reliefs depicting the Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal from the North Palace of Nineveh is a clear and detailed image of two mules loaded with nets for hunting. : 37 There are many representations of them in Mesopotamian works of art dating from the first millennium BC. : 96 Mules were present in Israel and Judah in the time of King David. : 37Ī painting in the Tomb of Nebamun at Thebes, dating from approximately 1350 BC, shows a chariot drawn by a pair of animals which have been variously identified as onagers, as mules : 37 or as hinnies. This overlap probably occurred in Anatolia and Mesopotamia in Western Asia, and mules were bred there before 1000 BC. History Painting in the Tomb of Nebamun at Thebes, showing a pair of animals which could be mules or onagers Ancient Greek rhyton in the shape of the head of a mule, made by Brygos, early fifth century BC, Jérôme Carcopino Museum, Aleria, Corsicaīreeding of mules became possible only when the range of the domestic horse, which originated in Central Asia in about 3500 BC, extended into that of the domestic ass, which originated in north-eastern Africa. A young male mule is called a "mule colt", and a young female is called a "mule filly". A male mule is properly called a "horse mule", although it is often called a "john mule", which is the correct term for a gelded mule. : 5 Terminology Ī female mule that has oestrus cycles, and so could, in theory, carry a foetus, is called a "molly" or "Molly mule", although the term is sometimes used to refer to female mules in general. They are more patient, hardier and longer-lived than horses, and are perceived as less obstinate and more intelligent than donkeys. Mules vary widely in size, and may be of any color. The horse and the donkey are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes of the two possible first-generation hybrids between them, the mule is easier to obtain and more common than the hinny, which is the offspring of a female donkey (a jenny) and a male horse (a stallion). It is the offspring of a male donkey (a jack) and a female horse (a mare). The mule is a domestic equine hybrid between a donkey and a horse.
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