By Katie Scott, Wired UK

For a short time only, visitors to the Natural History Museum will be able to see a butterfly that is both male and female.

The gynandromorph Papilio Memnon butterfly fortuitously 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, as the BBC adds: “…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.

The exhibition will run at the museum until 11 September but the butterfly may not be fluttering around for that long. The museum says in a statement: “As butterflies have a short life span, visitors will be able to see this rare species for a short time only. It will then become part of the Museum’s world-class Lepidoptera collection.”

Image: Natural History Museum

Source: Wired.co.uk

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