A scientific miracle has occurred: a mule has given birth to a
male foal in Morocco. Mules, which are hybrids created by
mating a horse and a donkey, are sterile and cannot
reproduce. There are only two other cases where a mule gave
birth?once in China in 1988 and the other in Morocco in
1984. Since 1527, when records began to be kept, there
have only been a total of 60 reported cases of mules giving
birth.
"The occurrence is so historically rare that the Romans had a
saying, ?Cum mula peperit,? meaning ?when a mule foals,?
the equivalent of our ?once in a very blue moon,?? says
veterinarian Gigi Kay, who has seen the new mother and her
son. She?s running blood tests on both of them to make sure
the mule is the real mother. The foal looks partly like a baby
donkey and partly like a baby mule, but doesn?t exactly
resemble either one.
A horse has 64 chromosomes and a donkey has 62, so a
mule ends up with 63, an uneven number which cannot
divide into chromosome pairs, making it unable to
reproduce.
Several white buffalo have been born to Native American
tribes in the past few years, a legendary portent. Is a mule
birth another sign of the future? Learn how to discover what
the future holds from ?Signs of the Times? by Ray Grasse,
click here.
For more information, click here.
