London: A half-male, half-female butterfly has hatched at London’s Natural History Museum — an example of a Great Mormon, Papilio memnon, a species native to Asia. The butterfly’s body is split in two, with a line down its middle marking the division between its male side and the colorful female side.The two sides are even different in the length of the insect’s antennae, media reported.
“It is a complete split; part-male, part-female… welded together inside,” said butterfly enthusiast Luke Brown from London’s Natural History Museum.
Experts say the rare sexual chimera which makes the butterfly one of the 0.01 percent of “gynandromorphs” is caused by a failure of the butterfly’s sex chromosomes to separate during fertilization.
Brown built his first butterfly house when he was seven, and has hatched out more than 300,000 butterflies, Papilio memnon being his third gynandromorph.
The butterfly is three and a half week’s old and will join the museum’s collection after living its month-long life.
Gynandromorphy is not limited to butterflies. Individual crabs, lobsters, spiders and chickens have been found with a mix of two sexes.
