How can donkeys and horses successfully breed together if they have different numbers of chromosomes?

Don't organisms need the same number of chromosomes to produce offspring?How can donkeys and horses successfully breed together if they have different numbers of chromosomes?
The offspring are infertile. An example of a post zygotic barrier.





Organisms need the same number of chromosomes to produce FERTILE offspring.How can donkeys and horses successfully breed together if they have different numbers of chromosomes?
Does not make a difference if the horse is a hinez57 or purebred. Report Abuse

They can produce offspring with different amounts of chromosomes but the offspring will almost always be sterile. Mules and hinnies can only usually be produced by breeding horses and donkeys together, not through intraspecial breeding. Occasionally a female mule can have a foal if sired by a pure blood horse or donkey but the fact that mules only have 63 chromosomes makes the pairing of chromosomes exceedingly difficult and therefore such occasions are very rare. Horses have 64 chromosomes whilst donkeys have only 62. This means that the chromosomes can pair off but one pair comes from the horse not from both parents, usually resulting in sterility.
Ignore the person who said they have the same number of chromosomes. Horses have 64 pair and the donkey 62. After meoisis and during fertilisation, 2 of the chromosomes from the horse combine producing a mule with 63 pair. The mules are sterile. its interesting to note that plant hybrids that are sterile are also called mules in plant circles.


It is also possible to cross donkeys with zebras and these are called zonkeys! cool hey.
isn't life grand?


you're getting into semantics by saying ';breed';. they can mate successfully to produce offspring but the offspring are not fit (well, except for the rare fertile mule...) because mules sex cells rarely divide to an appropriate haploid number to pair up with another sex cell.





i don't know much about the genetics, but i would think that sometimes some chromosomes can function without a pair (like X chromes in females where one is inactivated and females are fine with the one X running the show) so that's why mules exist. oh great...did i just say a woman is like a mule =\
The have the same number of chromosomes. Especially with reptiles, many breeds can interbreed, even with different numbers of chromosomes. These hybrids are sometimes able to have offspring themselves.
They don't successfully breed. Their offspring (mules) are not reproductively viable (they are sterile).
Look up ';Allopolyploid';
No, but their offspring is unable to reproduce. I don't really know how it works.
they ar'nt that successful, after all they do make an a.s.s of it...


LOL.
yes they can they produce a mule.


but the mule cant reproduce