14 DAY TRIAL // Last year, in October, a volunteer at a butterfly exhibit at Drexel University in Philadelphia chanced to lay eyes on one of Mother Nature's absolute weirdest offspring: a butterfly that was part male, part female.
The volunteer, a retired chemical engineer named Chris Johnson, spotted the rare insect just hours after it had emerged from its chrysalis. The man says that what sparked his attention was the butterfly's odd-looking wings.
The butterfly's appearance was quite bizarre
Chris Johnson details how, having caught a glimpse of the butterfly, he could not help but notice that the wings on the left side of its body looked different to the ones on the right, both in terms of size and color.
As noticeable in the photo accompanying this article, the insect's left wings were smaller and darker than the ones on the right. Besides, they showed not yellow and white spots, but green, blue and purple ones.
“I thought, somebody's fooling with me. It's just too perfect. Then I got goose bumps. It slowly opened up, and the wings were so dramatically different, it was immediately apparent what is was,” the retired chemical engineer explains.
As mentioned, this butterfly discovered by Chris Johnson in October 2014 owed its odd appearance to the fact that it was half male, half female. Thus, its darker wings were its manly side, and the brighter ones are its girly one.
How the unusual butterfly got its looks
The insect, identified as a Common Archduke butterfly – in case anyone was wondering, the species' official name is Lexias pardalis – was born sporting both male and female body parts because of a rare condition dubbed gynandromorphy.
Creatures suffering from gynandromorphy display male and female characteristics, meaning that they look as if they were two entities that somehow got glued together. They are different to hermaphrodites, which only have both male and female reproductive organs.
Scientists say that, as surprising as this may sound, gynandromorphy can also affect birds and even crustaceans. Still, it appears that this condition is more common among insects and birds than it is among other, more complex creatures.
“Gynandromorphism is most frequently noticed in bird and butterfly species where the two sexes have very different coloration,” explains specialist Jason Weintraub with Drexel University's Academy of Natural Sciences.
“It can result from non-disjunction of sex chromosomes, an error that sometimes occurs during the division of chromosomes at a very early stage of development,” the researcher goes on to detail.
It is understood that, come January 17, the preserved and pinned half male, half male butterfly will be put on display at the Academy of Natural Sciences Drexel University. The insect is to remain in the public eye until February 16.