Gynandromorph
Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 8:42 pm
No, it's not a new Red Dwarf episode...
A half-male, half-female butterfly has hatched at London's Natural History Museum.
A line down the insect's middle marks the division between its male side and its more colourful female side.
Failure of the butterfly's sex chromosomes to separate during fertilisation is behind this rare sexual chimera.
Once it has lived out its month-long life, the butterfly will join the museum's collection.
Only 0.01% of hatching butterflies are gynandromorphs; the technical term for these strange asymmetrical creatures.
"So you can understand why I was bouncing off of the walls when I learned that... [it] had emerged in the puparium," said butterfly enthusiast Luke Brown from London's Natural History Museum.
Mr Brown built his first butterfly house when he was seven, and has hatched out over 300 thousand butterflies; this is only his third gynandromorph.
