Why Can't Mules Have Babies?

Animals of different species rarely get it on, and when they do, they rarely produce offspring. But even rarer than the ligers, zonkeys, camas, and beefalo of the world are hybrid animals capable of making babies of their own.

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LEARN MORE
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To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
- Hybrid organisms: The offspring of two animals or plants of different breeds, varieties, species or genera.
- Mitosis: A process of cell division that produces copies of the original cell.
- Meiosis: A process of cell dividion that produces new daughter cells with half the chromosome number of the original cell.
- Sex cell, or gamete: a cell that fuses with another cell during fertilization (conception) in organisms that sexually reproduce.
- Hemiclonal transmission: The rare occurence in which only maternal DNA gets passed along during the creation of sex cells.

Species featured in this video:
- Mule, is the offspring of a male donkey (jack) and a female horse (mare)
- Liger,  is a hybrid cross between a male lion (Panthera leo) and a female tiger (Panthera tigris)
- Zonkey, is the offspring of a zebra and a donkey. Zebra hybrids are generally known as zebroids
- Beefalo, also known as cattalo, is the offspring of a domestic cattle (Bos taurus) and an American buffalo (Bison bison)
- Cama, is the offspring of a male dromedary camel and a female llama.

CREDITS
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Script Writer: David Goldenberg
Script Editor: Emily Elert
Video Illustrator: Chad Geran
Video Director: Emily Elert
Video Narrator: Emily Elert
With Contributions From: Henry Reich, Alex Reich, Kate Yoshida, Ever Salazar, Omkar Bhagat, Peter Reich, Rachel Becker
Music by: Nathaniel Schroeder

OTHER CREDITS
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Liger Hercules - Ed Quinn
https://goo.gl/A8zgxO

Zonkey - Flickr user Leogirly4life
https://goo.gl/QAcza0

Cama - TaylorLlamas.com
http://goo.gl/YCY3Zd

Beefalo - Noah's Ark Animal
Sanctuary
http://www.noahs-ark.org/


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REFERENCES
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Ryder, O., Chemnick, L., Bowling, A., Benirschke, K. (1985). Male mule foal qualifies as the offspring of a female mule and Jack donkey. Journal of Heredity 76 (379-381). Retrieved from http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/cont...

C.J. Zhao, Y.H. Qin, X.H. Lee, Ch. Wu (2006). Molecular and cytogenetic paternity testing of a male offspring of a hinny. Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics,123: 403-405. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17...

Bucholz (2013). Colorado miracle mule foal lived short life, but was well-loved.The Denver Post. Retrieved from http://www.denverpost.com/2013/08/16/...

Millon, L. (2016). Personal Communication.

Antczak, D. (2016). Personal Communication.

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