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Sir Alfred J. Munnings (1878 - 1959)

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hello beautiful

#my art #listen #neuvillette #LISTEN I think he’s mine now #and I’m making him into a huge big dragon #and putting him in the sea #genshin fanart #barely. lol

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+ some yucky girl ossy

#my art #osgyth #hehoo my love my light #hopefully will post more of her soon o7 #dnd oc #my oc

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after the storm

#my art #it’s osgyth time !!!!!!!! #osgyth #dnd oc #my oc #MY GIRL #original character #hehehe I’m using her for uni work #sneaky way to force urself to draw ur ocs #bringing her out of retirement

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the downside to harassing a cat constantly is that you run out of ways to bother them. so sure she's "well socialized" but how am i supposed to get revenge when she is being SO so annoying?

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hedgehog’s dilemma 

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FUDEZUKA Toshihisa（筆塚稔尚 Japanese, b.1957）

1. Shining Water 2  輝く水  2015  etching  21 × 15 cm  2. Rain Song 4  2015  etching 15.5 × 21.5 cm  3. Rain Song 3  2014  etching  25.5 × 39 cm   via

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His yucky face is my favourite thing ever

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almost a year ago the boyfriend dropped the first volume of dungeon meshi into my lap and got me hooked. now i’ve finally found time to sketch out some fanart :)

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• Bridal Crown.

Date: 1984

Jeweler/Maker: Ernst Tande, Hokksund

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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.

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

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

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

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

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One of the things that pisses me off most about this genocide and overall occupation is how many people say it's so complicated and there's so much nuance and there isn't one easy solution. This is one of the simplest things I have ever seen. Zionists invaded palestine in 1947-48. They have occupied it for 76 years while taking more and more land. They kidnap and torture and massacre Palestinians day in day out for those 76 years. They control every aspect of Palestinian life, including their water and medical care. And now they are committing another genocide against them. Where is the complication? What is hard to understand? "Well, Jewish people need a place where they won't be discriminated against" I absolutely agree. So make every country in the world safe for Jewish people. Fight against anti Semitism across the world. Don't commit a genocide and set up an ethnostate.

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fungr sillies