Xref: utzoo talk.bizarre:12248 misc.legal:4758 talk.politics.misc:9772 misc.jobs.misc:1708 sci.bio:1167 Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!uwvax!rutgers!hjuxa!akl From: akl@hjuxa.UUCP (A. K. Laux) Newsgroups: talk.bizarre,misc.legal,talk.politics.misc,misc.jobs.misc,sci.bio Subject: Re: Are Animals Patentable? Message-ID: <905@hjuxa.UUCP> Date: 9 May 88 18:02:30 GMT References: <5018@xanth.cs.odu.edu> <479@goofy.megatest.UUCP> <565@pedsga.UUCP> Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Manalapan, NJ Lines: 42 Summary: mules, hinnies In article <565@pedsga.UUCP>, lae@pedsga.UUCP writes: > In article <479@goofy.megatest.UUCP> djones@megatest.UUCP writes: > >I'm willing to be educated on this one. My dictionary says of "mule" > > "a hybrid between a horse and an ass." > >and of "hinny" > > "a hybrid between a stallion and a she-ass -- compare MULE." > >From this it would seem that a hinny _is_ a mule. But I can't draw any > >conclusion about the sex of the offspring. > >Who can enlighten the city slicker? > > When I lived on a ranch in Arizona we called the male mules "mules" and > the female mules "jennies." > Never heard of a hinny, though. Thanks for enlightening ME. > > Leslie Although I have never lived on a farm myself, both of my parents and both sets of grandparents did. It was from them that I learned about the difference between mules and hinnies. The mule is the result from breeding a female horse with a male ass. The hinny is the result from breeding a male horse with a female ass. This is a lot more difficult to produce, since the female mule is small, and her hinny offspring is often too large for normal, unaided birth. I believe that both mules and hinnies are sterile, although I could be wrong. . . . . . . . -- Anita K. Laux Digital Equipment Corp. ...!{clyde,decvax,ihnp4}!hjuxa!akl Manalapan, NJ 07726