A Lobster Primer

It's What's for Dinner?

The lobster has remained unchanged for millions of years. It is without a doubt one of the weirdest looking creatures. A lobster looks like a cross between a giant roach and a transformer.

This arthropod has eight walking legs, eyes on stalks, two pairs of antennae, a meaty tail and two powerful claws that can snap a persons finger off with ease (the larger one is called the crusher claw the other is the cutter). His brain is smaller than the head of an eraser and he has twenty pairs of gills. Lobsters can live more than 45 years but not many make it that far. Sadly it turns out many many things like to eat lobster. They can weigh up to 40 pounds and hear underwater sounds at the ends of their feet. Their sense of smell is also located in their legs. It's as if they have been built upside down and inside out.

If Homarus Americanus loses his claws, legs, or other body parts he can grow them back. In the summer this peculiar animal sheds his shell through molting and is defenseless for weeks until the new shell hardens. They are basically scavengers that eat snails, dead fish and algae amongst other oogy things. Sometimes they even eat each other.

Lobster are found mostly in the cool waters of the West Atlantic although there are a few species that are found is parts of Europe that are even stranger looking. But they are not great in number.

Female lobster are smaller than males and they have the burden of carrying around 50,000 to 70,000 fertilized eggs for almost an entire year. When they start to hatch she ditches them and they float up to the top of the water to mature. And that's when they begin their struggle to avoid becoming meals with tails. After about a month the few that have not been eaten by fish or birds float to the bottom and remain there for the rest of their lives. They mature in around six to nine years.

An interesting fact about this crustacean is that they were so numerous in Colonial America they were considered pests and were used as fertilizer. And it was with shame that the poorest of the poor had to dine on fresh lobster. My how things have changed. Now of course fresh lobster is considered an expensive delicacy.