Discovering a new spider species is exciting all on its own, but when scientists found one member of that species that was 50% male and 50% female, it was quite the event.

The new species was discovered by scientists at Chulalongkorn University and Ubon Ratchathani University while they were conducting a survey of a forest area in Phanom Thuan, which is in Western Thailand.

The new species, named Damarchus inazuma, has a body that is around an inch long. The females of this species are mostly a brown-orange color, and the males are darker with a speckled white appearance.

Dimorphism is very common among spiders, where the males and females have a very distinct look to them. While studying the spiders, they found one that was female on the left side and male on the right.

The biological makeup of a spider is determined by its chromosomes. Normally, the spider would either have XX (female) chromosomes or XY (male) chromosomes. Occasionally, however, something goes wrong during the development of the spider, which leads to gynandromorphism.

When this happens, the chromosomes don’t split up the way they normally would, which can leave the spider (or other animal) with an XYY chromosome.

From there, the animal can develop with characteristics of each gender, which is what happened here. The animal is not always split right down the middle like this spider was, however.

The fact that such a unique member of the species was discovered during the same research as the whole species makes it quite unique.

The researchers who found the spider had the honor of naming it, so they called it Damarchus inazuma, after a Japanese manga character in the “One Piece” story that had the ability to change between male and female.

Research on the new spider species and this unique member has been published in the journal Zootaxa.

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