Top 40 Amazing Facts About Lobster | Amazing Facts 4U
- The lobster is an invertebrate that belongs to the crustacean family. There are 49 lobster species found in the oceans. Lobsters can also inhabit fresh. Out of 49 lobster species, 33 are commercially exploited.
- Around 200 000 tons of lobsters are caught each year. Despite this, lobsters are still not listed as endangered.
- Lobsters can be divided in two groups: clawed and spiny. Clawed lobsters have claws and they inhabit cold waters. Spiny lobsters have long antennas instead of claws and they could be found in the tropical warm waters.
- Depending on the species, lobsters vary in size from 0.8 to 3.25 feet in length. They keep growing forever.
- Clawed lobsters have two unequal claws. They are used for catching and slicing of prey.
- The bigger claw is called the crusher claw which is used to break up the food. The cutter claw is used for tearing. If a lobster loses one of its claws or walking legs, it is regenerated.
- Lobsters are ten-legged creatures, just like shrimps and crabs, which are their closest relatives.
- Just like in other Arthropods, body of the lobster is protected by outer skeleton called “exoskeleton”. It is also known as a shell.
- Shell cannot expand in size as the lobster grows and it sheds periodically. Lobsters without shells are very vulnerable and they usually hide until new shell is formed.
- Every time they molt splitting their shells along the seam in the carapace, lobsters increase 20 % in size. Young lobsters molt several times a year, but elder one’s molt annually.
- If you take just molted lobster out of water, the claws will fall off as it doesn’t have the mechanical strength to keep it in place. Amazingly they eat their old shells for the calcium and phosphorus.
- Amazing thing about the lobster is that when the lobster is under attack or simply frightened the lobster escapes from danger by walking backward at an average speed of 18 Km per hour by pumping their tails.
- Lobsters actually don’t swim. Lobsters simply crawl on the ocean’s surface slowly, but without swimming. Lobsters are nocturnal animals, so it’s best to hunt them at night.
- Sometimes they walk hand in hand, with older lobsters leading the young ones.
- Lobster blood is colorless until exposed to oxygen, at which point it turns blue. When cooked, lobster blood turns into a whitish gel.
- Lobsters carry multiple colors. Typically, they are a mottled brown, but genetic mutations can create red, blue and even albino lobsters. Heat denatures the proteins in the lobsters’ shells which turns their shells bright red when cooked because heat destroys all colors except red.
- Lobsters mainly eat meat, such as fish, mollusks, worms and crustaceans. They also consume algae and other type of sea vegetation.
- Lobsters have excellent sense of smell and touch. They use both senses to detect prey. They have three pairs of antennae, the largest of which is used for tactile sensing. The two smaller pairs are chemosensory, helping the lobster find its food by sensing dissolved substances in the water.
- Amazingly lobsters can be right-handed, left-handed, or ambidextrous like humans.
- Lobsters can’t see clear images, but their compound eyes are sensitive to light. Eyes don’t regenerate. Deep sea lobsters are blind.
- Lobsters use the front two legs studded with chemosensory hairs to put food into their mouths. The food travels through the tomalley which is green organ consisting of a small intestine, pancreas, and liver all in one!
- Amazingly lobsters have teeth in their stomachs called gastric mill.
- Lobsters have very small brain no bigger than the tip of a ball point pen!
- Lobsters pee out of their faces. The urine comes from antennal glands located near the antennae. Peeing at each other is part of both fighting and courtship.
- Courtship in lobsters is complicated. To woo a dominant male the female heads to his shelter many times peeing urine with chemical pheromone which signals to male that “It’s time to breed and “Don’t eat me!”. This signal is important since lobsters are cannibals.
- The lobster’s voice is a crackly noise sometimes compared to violins. they have no lungs and no vocal cords.
- During a mating period, female becomes vulnerable because she throws away her shell. After a week of mating, new shell will develop and female will have large number of eggs deposited inside her body.
- A lobster might carry 10,000 to 40,000 eggs depending upon size, which are kept in place by glue created in her cement glands. If you’re eating lobster, you might see bright red stuff made of unextruded eggs known as roe.
- When lobsters mate, the eggs aren’t fertilized right away. Females can carry live sperm for up to two years, until they decide that it’s time to fertilize their eggs.
- Amazingly out of 10,000 eggs, only 100 will survive until the adulthood. Lobster reaches the size of the adult animal after 7 years of constant growth.
- Amazingly they migrate up to 160 kilometres every year to find the perfect breeding ground for their fragile babies.
- When a fisherman traps, a female lobster carrying eggs, he puts a V-notch in her tail which is a signal to other fishermen that she’s a breeding female whether she has eggs or not, and should be thrown back. They’re protected as long as that notch is present.
- The fact is Lobster fishermen throwback lobsters that are too small or too big. The small ones need to grow, while the large ones add vigour to the gene pool. In Maine, a lobster’s body must be at least 3 1/4 inches to keep, and can’t be over 5 inches.
- When lobsters first hatch, they float for the first couple of weeks. After this phase, they settle on the bottom.
- Amazingly lobsters in the wild can survive up to 100 years however most of them live much shorter because they end up in the fishing nets.
- Scientists have discovered an accurate way to determine a lobster’s age by dissecting it and counting the rings in the eye stalk and gastric mill.
- The largest lobster ever recorded was caught near Nova Scotia in 1977 and weighed about 20 Kg! It was 3 feet, 6 inches long.
- Lobster meat is a great source of protein, providing 28 grams of protein per cup. They are also a great source of healthy omega3 fatty acids.
- Lobsters have low fat content. About 100 grams provides only 96 calories and about 2 grams of fat.
- Amazingly lobsters are extremely sensitive to insecticides, even at parts per billion concentration and can die with negligible concentrations of insecticides.
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