Amazing Gynandromorphs

Is it a boy or is it a girl? Sometimes it's both!

Animals with bodies that are half male and half female are called "gynandromorphs." This happens when, during cell division, sex chromosomes are divided unevenly (nondisjunction), causing some of the cells to have female sex chromosomes (or a single female sex chromosome) and the other cells to have male sex chromosomes. Some gynandromorphs are bilateral, meaning that the male and female halves of the body are split perfectly down the middle, while other gynandromorphs are mosaic, meaning their male and female cells are scattered unevenly throughout the body. Here are some examples of bilateral gynandromorphs in species that have blatant sexual dimorphism so that you can see clearly which side is male and which side is female at a glance. Quite striking!

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus). The male half is yellow with tiger stripes and the female half is black with an iridescent blue sheen.

 Atlantic blue crab or Chesapeake blue crab (Callinectes sapidus). The male half has the blue claw, the female side has the red claw.

Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis). The female side is a "buff-brown" color and the male side is red.

Gynandromorphic chicken. The brown side is female and the side with the white feathers, larger wattle and breast muscles, and a spur on the leg is the male side.

To learn more about these and other gynandromorphs, check out the resources below . . .

RESOURCES:

Gynandromorphs

http://www.daltonstate.edu/galeps/Gyn

Half male, half female butterfly steals the show at Natural History Museum

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jul/12/half-male-half-female-butterfly

Photo in the News: Rare He-She Crab Found in Chesapeake

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0616_050616_gender_crab.html

Gender-Bending Chickens: Mixed, Not Scrambled

http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2010/03/12/sex-bird-gynandromorph-somatic/

 Every cell in a chicken has its own male or female identity

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/tag/gynandromorph/#.UZgmrkpIEpo