Lobster Trivia
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97 free Lobster trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
51 free Lobster trivia questions with answers. Lobsters are stranger than the menu lets on. They have blue blood and kidney-shaped organs that cooks call tomalley, they can live half a century, they communicate by squirting urine at each other, and until well into the 1800s New Englanders thought of them as poverty food. This quiz covers all of it: anatomy, colour mutations and how rare they really are, the life cycle from larva to legal size, and the history of the fishery from the first Maine cannery to today's welfare laws. It also covers the lobster in culture and the kitchen: lobster rolls and who invented them, Thermidor and Newberg, Red Lobster, the B-52's, Eddie Murphy's Larry the Lobster, Dalí's Lobster Telephone and Dr. Zoidberg. About a third of the questions are easy enough for kids and casual players; the rest go deep enough to test a marine biologist or a Maine lobsterman. Every answer was checked against a primary source, mostly Wikipedia's lobster articles, and each question shows its citation.
30 of 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Friends character tells the gang that lobsters fall in love and mate for life?
Phoebe
Phoebe: when Rachel kisses Ross after watching their old prom video, Phoebe declares, 'See, he's her lobster.'
Q 02What colour does a lobster's blood turn when it picks up oxygen?
Blue
Blue: a lobster's blood carries oxygen with copper instead of iron, and it looks almost colourless until that copper binds oxygen.
Q 03What does Homer Simpson name the lobster he buys to fatten up and eat, but keeps as a pet?
Pinchy
Pinchy: Homer can't bring himself to cook his new pet, then accidentally boils him in a hot bath and sobs while eating him.
Q 04Which enzyme, usually off in adult vertebrates, do lobsters keep producing, possibly explaining their longevity?
Telomerase
Telomerase: it repairs the protective caps on chromosome ends, and a 1998 study found high levels in every lobster organ, helping adult cells keep dividing.
Q 05The green substance inside a cooked lobster, called tomalley by cooks, is which organ?
The hepatopancreas
The hepatopancreas: it does the work of a liver and a pancreas, and because toxins can build up in it, the FDA advises people not to eat it.
Q 06Why does a lobster's shell change to bright red when it is cooked?
Heat destroys a masking protein
Heat destroys a masking protein: crustacyanin binds the red pigment astaxanthin, so live lobsters look olive-green or brown until cooking breaks the protein apart.
Q 07How does a lobster move when it needs to flee quickly?
Swims backward by flexing its tail
Swims backward by flexing its tail: the huge abdominal muscles that power this escape flip are the tail meat people eat.
Q 08In which Lewis Carroll book do the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon perform the 'Lobster Quadrille'?
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: in the Mock Turtle's seaside dance, partners throw the lobsters as far out to sea as they can, then swim after them.
Q 09The legend of servants refusing lobster more than twice a week was earlier told about which fish?
Salmon
Salmon: an 1893 town history says its poor protested being served salmon more than twice a week, and historians have found no proof for either version.
Q 10During England's Civil War, what first earned some cavalrymen the jibe 'lobsters'?
Their jointed armour
Their jointed armour: Sir Arthur Haselrig's heavily armoured horsemen were the 'London lobsters', and the jibe later passed to Britain's red-coated soldiers.
Q 11Which country outlawed boiling lobsters alive in 2018, requiring them to be stunned first?
Switzerland
Switzerland: the law followed studies suggesting lobsters have advanced nervous systems and may feel pain, and it also bans shipping them alive on ice.
Q 12What does the 'V-notch' cut into a lobster's tail by American lobstermen indicate?
A female that carried eggs
A female that carried eggs: fishermen notch egg-bearing females before releasing them, and nobody may keep a notched lobster, so proven breeders go on producing eggs.
Q 13Which purpose-built boat with seawater tanks on board made the 19th-century live lobster trade possible?
The smack
Q 21A female lobster whose swimmerets are loaded with eggs is said to be what?
In berry
In berry: she carries the eggs for about nine to eleven months, then sets the hatching larvae free in batches by waving her tail.
Q 22The American lobster's natural range runs from Labrador south to which point?
Cape Hatteras, North Carolina
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.
Q 23Of the lobsters that enter a baited trap to feed, about how many end up caught?
6 in 100
6 in 100: the other 94 walk right back out, making the classic lobster trap a surprisingly inefficient tool.
The smack: seawater flowing through its tanks kept lobsters alive on the way to city markets, so the catch no longer had to be sold near shore.
Q 14Which French cookbook from around 1300 suggests lobster be 'cooked in wine and water, or in the oven'?
Le Viandier de Taillevent
Le Viandier de Taillevent: it is credited to royal cook Guillaume Tirel, yet its earliest known version was written about ten years before he was born.
Q 15Where was the lobster caught in 1977 that Guinness World Records lists as the heaviest?
Nova Scotia, Canada
Nova Scotia, Canada: lobsters keep growing with each moult, which is how that American lobster reached about 44 pounds.
Q 16How does an American lobster tell rivals and potential mates what and where it is?
By squirting urine from its head
By squirting urine from its head: its bladders open near the base of its antennae, and a forward water current carries the scent signal ahead of it.
Q 17What is the bigger, blunter of an American lobster's two front claws called?
The crusher
The crusher: its rounded, toothy nodules pulverise shells, while the sharper cutter claw tears soft flesh.
Q 18Roughly how rare is a blue lobster, according to the usual estimate?
1 in 2 million
1 in 2 million: lucky finders usually spare blue lobsters from the pot, often donating them to public aquariums.
Q 19In a 2003 study, what did Caribbean spiny lobsters carried up to 37 km use to orient homeward?
Earth's magnetic field
Earth's magnetic field: because the field differs from place to place it can work like a map, and the lobsters oriented as if reading one.
Q 20Which lobster colouring is the rarest of all, seen roughly once in every 100,000,000 animals?
Albino or white
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.
Q 24Where does a lobster grind its food with hardened, tooth-like plates?
In its stomach
In its stomach: a gastric mill of one central tooth flanked by lateral teeth grinds the food, working much like a turkey's gizzard.
Q 25At what time of day are lobsters most active?
At night
At night: by day they shelter among rocks and in crevices, hiding from predators, then come out after dark to feed.
Q 26Lobster eyes focus light by which method, later copied in X-ray telescopes?
Reflection from mirrored facets
Reflection from mirrored facets: most animal eyes bend light with lenses, but a lobster's bounces it off reflective surfaces, a layout that gives X-ray telescopes a very wide view.
Q 27How can you tell a rock lobster from a 'true' clawed lobster at a glance?
Antennae long, claws absent
Antennae long, claws absent: spiny lobsters also march across the sea floor in long single-file lines, keeping in touch with those antennae.
Q 28Rock lobsters are the biggest food export of which island nation?
Bahamas
Bahamas: its national parks protect mangrove shallows where young lobsters settle among the roots before moving out to the reefs.
Q 29The scampi or langoustine served in restaurants is the tail meat of which slim, coral-coloured species?
Norway lobster
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.
Q 30Australia's Moreton Bay bug and Balmain bug are which kind of lobster, with plate-like antennae?
Slipper lobsters
Slipper lobsters: despite the name they aren't true lobsters but closer kin to spiny lobsters, and those broad plates are their second antennae.