Dual Gendered Animals – Stage but Beautiful

Every now and then nature loses its way and strange things begin to happen to how organisms naturally develop. Take for example the phenomenon bilateral gynandromorphs. This basically turns the specimen half female and half male.

This condition seldom happens, but it’s not unique to a certain species. This happens amongst crustaceans, insects and even birds, however, there hasn’t been a bilateral gynandromorphs case recorded for humans. This strange happening is also said to happen differently to the groups of organisms affected by it.

Amongst insects, bilateral gynandromorphs is easily understood. If an insect has two X chromosomes, it’s a female. Naturally, a male specimen would have XY chromosomes, however, embryos that lose the Y chromosome still turns into what appears like a male specimen. Bilateralgynandromorphs happens when two sperms enter the female’s egg at the same time. One sperm fuses together with the egg’s nucleus and prepares to develop a female specimen. Since the other sperm develops with an incomplete pair of chromosomes in the egg, both a female and male insect develops in one body.

As for birds, it’s said that this happens when two different embryos combine together during the early stages of development, basically opposite of what happens with identical twins. Another theory says that this happens when the bird’s sex chromosomes don’t separate when the cells first divide. Others also suggest that it happens while the egg is still forming. The egg could accidentally be containing two chromosomes rather than just one.

However it happens, specimens that went through this strange development error end up looking very peculiar, with bodies that contain half male characteristics and half female characteristics.