58 Fun Facts About Lobster

Lobsters belong to a crustacean order whose name literally means what?

The order's name means ten-footed: a lobster's two big claws count as legs, so eight walking legs plus the claw pair make ten, the trait shared with crabs and shrimp.

What colour is a lobster's blood?

Snails and spiders share the same copper-based pigment; iron-based haemoglobin is what makes ours red.

Roughly how long can a lobster live in the wild?

Lobsters may live 45 to 50 years in the wild; age is hard to pin down because moulting discards the shell and any growth rings, so estimates lean on body size.

Which enzyme, usually off in adult vertebrates, do lobsters keep producing, possibly explaining their longevity?

Telomerase rebuilds telomeres, the protective caps on chromosome ends; a 1998 study found lobsters express it in every tissue, unlike most adult vertebrate cells, a possible clue to their long lives.

The green substance inside a cooked lobster, called tomalley by cooks, is which organ?

Tomalley is the hepatopancreas, a single organ doing the work of both liver and pancreas by filtering toxins and producing digestive enzymes; its soft green paste is prized by some diners.

Why does a lobster's shell change to bright red when it is cooked?

The pigment is astaxanthin, the same one that colours salmon and flamingos; the protein crustacyanin normally hides it.

How does a lobster move when it needs to flee quickly?

A fleeing lobster swims backward by flexing its tail: rapid contractions of the abdominal muscles snap the tail fan beneath the body, shooting it away at up to about 5 metres per second.

Symbion pandora, which lives on lobster mouthparts, belongs to which animal phylum described in 1995?

Cycliophora was erected in 1995 for Symbion pandora, a microscopic animal found on the mouthpart bristles of lobsters; its bizarre multi-stage life cycle justified a brand-new phylum.

In colonial New England, lobster was widely regarded as food for whom?

Colonial New Englanders saw lobster, which piled up on beaches after storms, as cheap food for the poor and indentured servants; the story of laws capping servants' lobster meals has no documentary evidence.

The first lobster cannery in the United States opened in the 1840s in Eastport, in which state?

By 1880 the state had 23 canneries and two-thirds of its 14 million-pound catch went into tins.

Which country outlawed boiling lobsters alive in 2018, requiring them to be stunned first?

Switzerland's animal-protection ordinance, in force from March 2018, requires lobsters to be stunned before they are killed and bans transporting them on ice; New Zealand and the Italian city of Reggio Emilia have similar rules.

What does the 'V-notch' cut into a lobster's tail by American lobstermen indicate?

A V-notch marks a female that carried eggs: lobstermen clip a tail flipper of egg-bearing females, and any notched lobster must be thrown back, protecting proven breeders through several moults.

Which purpose-built boat with open holding tanks on deck made the 19th-century live trade possible?

The lobster smack, a custom boat with open seawater wells on deck, kept lobsters alive on the run to Boston; before it, lobster had to be cooked within days of leaving the sea.

Which French cookbook from around 1300 suggests lobster be 'cooked in wine and water, or in the oven'?

Le Viandier de Taillevent, a recipe collection from around 1300 traditionally credited to royal cook Guillaume Tirel, is among the earliest French cookbooks, and its dishes were served at the Valois court.

Where was the 20.15 kg lobster that set the Guinness weight record in 1977 landed?

The record lobster, an American lobster of 20.15 kg (44 lb 6 oz), was caught off Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1977, making the species the heaviest crustacean on Earth.

How does an American lobster tell rivals and potential mates what and where it is?

The plumes can travel a metre or two, and are aimed straight at whoever the lobster has noticed.

An American lobster's two front claws are different. What is the bigger, blunter one called?

The other is the cutter or gripper; which side carries the big one decides whether the lobster is 'left- or right-handed'.

Roughly how rare is a blue lobster, according to the usual estimate?

Blue lobsters are put at about 1 in 2 million; a genetic mutation alters how the shell pigment is packaged, and only a handful turn up in the catch each year.

What are the estimated odds of catching a lobster that is red while still alive?

A living red lobster is estimated at 1 in 10 million; every lobster turns red when cooked, but only a rare genetic quirk shows that colour while the animal is alive.

Which lobster colouring is the rarest of all, seen roughly once in every 100,000,000 animals?

Albino or white lobsters, lacking all shell pigment, are put at 1 in 100 million, rarer even than split two-tone lobsters, one colour on each side, which are estimated at 1 in 50 million.

A female lobster whose swimmerets are loaded with eggs is said to be what?

A female carrying eggs under her tail is 'in berry', because the dark egg mass looks like a cluster of berries; she carries them for 10 to 11 months before they hatch.

The American lobster's natural range runs from Labrador south to which point?

The range ends at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina; south of New Jersey the species is rare, and landings from Delaware to North Carolina make up under 0.1 per cent of the total.

For how long can a female American lobster store a male's sperm before using it to fertilise her eggs?

A female can hold a male's sperm for up to 15 months; mating happens only in the brief window after she moults, and she fertilises her eggs later as she extrudes them.

Only about how many lobsters that enter a lobster trap to feed are actually caught?

Underwater video found only about 6 in 100 lobsters that enter a trap are caught; the rest eat the herring bait and leave, so traps work largely as feeding stations.

Roughly what share of lobster larvae are thought to survive the planktonic stage to become juveniles?

Only about 1 in 1,000 larvae survives: the tiny hatchlings drift near the surface for weeks, where fish and other plankton-feeders eat almost all of them before they settle to the bottom.

Where does a lobster grind its food with hardened, tooth-like plates?

A lobster chews in its stomach: a gastric mill of three hardened, tooth-like plates grinds food that was swallowed almost whole before the finer particles pass on for digestion.

At what time of day are lobsters most active?

Lobsters are nocturnal: they spend the day tucked in burrows or rock crevices and come out at night to forage for clams, mussels, crabs and dead fish on the sea floor.

Lobster eyes focus light by which method, later copied in X-ray telescopes?

Lobster eyes use reflection from mirrored facets: thousands of square, mirror-lined tubes bounce light onto the retina instead of bending it through lenses, an arrangement engineers borrowed for wide-field X-ray telescopes.

How can you tell a rock lobster from a 'true' clawed lobster at a glance?

Spiny lobsters also migrate across the sea floor in long single-file lines, staying in touch with their antennae.

Rock lobsters are the biggest food export of which island nation?

The Bahamas' Caribbean spiny lobster, sold locally as crawfish, is the nation's largest food export, shipped mainly to the United States and Europe; many spiny lobsters also scare predators with a rasping antenna screech.

The scampi or langoustine served in restaurants is the tail meat of which slim, coral-coloured species?

Norway lobster, Nephrops norvegicus, is the langoustine of French menus and the Dublin Bay prawn of Ireland; its genus name means 'kidney eye', after its kidney-shaped compound eyes.

Australia's Moreton Bay bug and Balmain bug are which kind of lobster, with plate-like antennae?

Moreton Bay and Balmain bugs are slipper lobsters, family Scyllaridae, whose second antennae are flattened into broad plates; around 90 species exist, and all of them are edible.

The 1961-63 'Lobster War' over spiny lobster fishing pitted France against which country?

Brazil argued that lobsters 'crawl along the continental shelf' and so belonged to it; France insisted that 'lobsters swim'.

The lobster roll is credited to a restaurant called Perry's, opened by 1929, in which state?

Perry's, a restaurant in Milford, Connecticut, was serving lobster rolls by 1929, which is why the hot buttered version came to be known as Connecticut style.

How is a Maine-style lobster roll served?

A Maine-style roll is served cold with mayonnaise, the chilled meat lightly dressed and piled into a split-top bun; the hot version is tossed in melted butter instead.

Lobster Thermidor is named after an 1891 play by Victorien Sardou, which was itself named after what?

Thermidor was the eleventh month of the revolutionary year; the dish is finished with a browned cheese crust, typically Gruyère.

Legend says Lobster Newberg got its title when a restaurant fell out with captain Ben Wenberg and did what?

The story is set at Delmonico's in 1876, though no surviving Delmonico's menu lists a 'Lobster Wenberg'.

Bisque, the creamy lobster soup, may take its name from which body of water off France?

One account derives bisque from the Bay of Biscay, the shellfish-rich gulf off western France; another says it comes from 'bis cuites', twice cooked, since the shellfish are sautéed and then simmered.

The first Red Lobster restaurant opened in 1968 in which state?

Bill Darden and Charley Woodsby opened the first Red Lobster in Lakeland, Florida, in 1968, billed as the 'Harbor for Seafood Lovers'; the chain filed for bankruptcy in 2024.

'Rock Lobster' was the debut single of which American band?

The B-52's released 'Rock Lobster' as their first single in 1978 on the tiny DB Records label and re-recorded it for their 1979 debut album; its surf-guitar riff and Fred Schneider's yelps became the band's calling card.

Which musician said hearing 'Rock Lobster' persuaded him to start recording again in 1980?

John Lennon said that hearing 'Rock Lobster' in a Bermuda club in 1980 convinced him the music scene had caught up with Yoko Ono's sound, and he went back into the studio for Double Fantasy.

What happened when Eddie Murphy let 1982 SNL viewers phone in to decide whether Larry the lobster would live or die?

Larry was saved by about 12,000 votes, roughly 239,000 to 227,000, after nearly 500,000 calls at 50 cents each came in during a 30-minute span, one of television's first interactive polls.

Salvador Dalí's 1936 'Lobster Telephone' pairs a working phone with a lobster made of what?

The lobster is painted plaster mounted on a working Bakelite telephone; Dalí joked he could never understand why, when he ordered a grilled lobster, he was never served a boiled telephone.

Dr. Zoidberg, the lobster-like alien doctor in Futurama, comes from a planet with what name?

Zoidberg hails from Decapod 10, a planet of lobster-like Decapodians; Billy West voices him with a Yiddish-inflected accent, and he lives in a dumpster outside Planet Express.

In 'The Lobster' (2015), how many days do single hotel guests have to find a partner before becoming an animal?

Hotel guests get 45 days to find a partner or be turned into an animal of their choosing; Colin Farrell's David picks a lobster because, he says, they live over a hundred years and stay fertile.

Which essayist's 2004 Gourmet piece 'Consider the Lobster' asked whether boiling them alive is right?

The title nods to M. F. K. Fisher's 'Consider the Oyster'; Wallace was reporting from the Maine Lobster Festival.

A mosaic in the ruins of which Roman city suggests spiny lobster was on the menu during the early empire?

A marine-life mosaic from Pompeii, preserved by Vesuvius in AD 79, shows a spiny lobster among fish and an octopus, evidence that Romans of the early empire valued it as food.

What were 19th-century lobster canneries' discarded shells sold as?

Cannery shells were ground into fertiliser and spread on fields, which likely seeded the legend of whole lobsters used as manure; whole lobster was more often used as fish bait.

Roughly what proportion of lobsters die of exhaustion during moulting?

Roughly 10 to 15 per cent of lobsters are thought to die of exhaustion while moulting; very old lobsters stop moulting altogether, and their shells eventually degrade or collapse, which finally kills them.

Since 2022, lobsters have been legally recognised as sentient beings in which country?

The UK's Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 lists crustaceans such as lobsters and crabs as sentient, following a London School of Economics review that found strong evidence they feel pain.

Which copper-containing pigment carries oxygen in a lobster's blood?

Hemocyanin binds oxygen with a pair of copper atoms rather than the iron of haemoglobin; snails, spiders and horseshoe crabs carry the same molecule in their blood.

What does a lobster load into its balance organs after each moult?

After each moult a lobster packs grains of sand into its statocysts, the balance organs at the base of its antennules; the grains press on sensory hairs and tell it which way is up.

Which French book of 1393 contains no fewer than five lobster recipes?

Le Ménagier de Paris, written in 1393 as a guide for a young wife running an upper-class household, includes five lobster recipes among its advice on cooking, gardening and managing servants.

What does a lobster typically do with its old shell after moulting?

A freshly moulted lobster usually eats its cast-off shell, recovering minerals that help harden the soft new one over the following weeks.

What is the holding chamber of a traditional lobster trap called?

A traditional trap has two rooms: the lobster enters the 'kitchen' to take the bait, then climbs through a funnel into the 'parlour', a holding chamber it struggles to leave.

A lobster's shell is chitin hardened mainly with which mineral?

A lobster's shell is chitin stiffened with calcium carbonate, mostly as calcite, which is why a freshly moulted lobster stays soft for weeks while it draws calcium from seawater and its diet.

Who gave the American lobster its scientific name Homarus americanus in 1837?

Henri Milne-Edwards published the name Homarus americanus in 1837; Thomas Say had described the species in 1817 from the New Jersey coast, but the name he gave it was later rejected.

By the time it reaches minimum landing size, an American lobster may have moulted roughly how many times?

An American lobster moults roughly 25 to 27 times over its first five to seven years before reaching minimum landing size; each later moult can add 40 to 50 per cent to its weight.