The hinny is a hybrid animal resulting from the breeding of a male horse and a female donkey, which physically has the body of a donkey and the limbs of a horse. They are generally smaller and less common than mules (a cross between a mare and a donkey), which have always been used more as pack animals.
As a hybrid animal, the hinny is naturally sterile, although there have been some cases of offspring between hinnies and mules, as both have 63 pairs of chromosomes, resulting in foals.
Offspring between horses and donkeys is possible because they are not so genetically distant, as horses have 64 chromosomes and donkeys have 62, resulting in hinnies and mules with a total of 63 chromosomes.
The bray of the hinny
The sound that hinnies make, like horses, is a neigh. Although the neigh of hinnies is somewhat deeper than that of horses.
Characteristics of hinnies
They are intermediate in size between mules and donkeys, and have a slender head similar to that of a horse. They also have a thick, long mane and hooves that are wider than those of donkeys. They have highly developed genital organs, which causes them to produce high levels of testosterone and have a strong sexual appetite despite being sterile, which is why they are usually castrated.
Both mules and hinnies are animals created by humans in an attempt to combine the strength and speed of horses with the endurance and intelligence of donkeys, randomly developing the best qualities of their parents. However, in order to obtain them, it is necessary to train the parents, as these species avoid each other in the wild. For this reason, artificial insemination is used to achieve this objective.
Comparison between mule and hinny
Photos of hinnies
