Rare Hermaphrodite Butterfly Hatches in London Museum

Visitors to the London Natural History Museum can currently see a butterfly that is both male and female.

The gynandromorph Papilio Memnon butterfly hatched in the puparium at this year’s Sensational Butterflies exhibition. It is one of just 200 gynandromorph butterflies among the 4.5 million butterfly specimens in the museum.

The term gynandromorph comes from the Greek “Gyn” to mean female, and “Andro” to mean male. The butterfly has distinctly different male and female markings — darker colorings on the male side and paler coloring, with flecks of blue, red and tortoiseshell on the female side.

As the coloring denotes, the butterfly is literally half female, half male — its sexual organs are half and half, and even its antennae are different lengths.

The Museum explains: “Insects can become gynandromorphs if the sex chromosomes do not properly separate during the first division of a fertilized egg, resulting in an insect with both male and female cells. They can also occur when an egg with two sex chromosomes, instead of a single one, gets fertilized by two sperm.”

Gynandromorph lobsters, spiders and crabs have also been observed.

Read more in the original article here.