Incredibly Rare Half Blue Male-Female Lobster

Story:

No, you’re not just seeing things. This split-colored lobster displays a condition known as gynandromorphy, meaning it is half male, half female. In this case, the blue side is the female side, and the brown side is the male side. This genetic variation occurs in about 1 out of every 50 million lobsters. Gynandromorphs aren’t always split neatly down the middle; they can also be calico patterned.

Other Versions

Incredibly rare half blue male/female lobster found off the coast of Newfoundland.

Analysis:

The picture messages circulating online show an amazing half-blue half-brown, male-female lobster that is said to be incredibly rare. Although the two-toned lobster looks unreal, the claim is a fact!

The picture of half-blue, male-female lobster became popular online after a reddit user okanagandude shared it in August 2013, saying ‘my uncle is a fisherman, caught this lobster off Felix Cove, NFLD yesterday. half male, half female‘.

Picture of Incredibly Rare Half Blue Male-Female Lobster — Incredibly Rare Half Blue Male-Female Lobster

Peter Marche was the fish harvester out of Felix Cove who caught the strange two-tone black and blue lobster in his trap on 17 June 2013. What makes the strange looking lobster incredibly rare is its two genders – female on the blue side and male on the regular brown colored side. This pattern was suspected to be the result of a cellular split during the embryonic development of the lobster, just after its fertilization. You can watch Peter Marche showing and talking about his find of rare half-blue lobster in a video here.

Gynandromorph

A Gynandromorph (in Greek “gyne” means female and “andro” means male) is an organism having characteristics of both male and female. The term gynandromorph is generally used in studying flies and insects, where both male and female characteristics can be seen physically because of sexual dimorphism. Few cases of gynandromorphism have also been reported in groups of arthropods, especially the lobsters, and sometimes in crabs and even in birds.

In Past

In July 2006, an eastern Maine lobsterman Alan Robinson caught a green-orange lobster in Dyer’s Bay, Bar Harbor. As shown in the last picture in Image Gallery, the lobster was green on one side and orange on the other, looking as if it was already cooked. The lobster was donated to the Mount Desert Oceanarium, the staff members of which said that the odds of finding a half-and-half lobster are 1 in 50 million to 100 million. And by comparison, the odds of finding a blue lobster are about 1 in a million.