15 June: National Lobster Day

Today is National Lobster Day. Here are 10 things you might not know about lobsters:

1. Lobsters belong to the family Nephropidae.
2. Their Blood is colourless until exposed to Oxygen, at which point it turns Blue.
3. They moult, that is, shed their shell and grow a new one, at least once a year. Younger lobsters moult more often. When the time comes, they find a place to hide and shed their entire shell. The new shell underneath is softer than human skin – they’re extremely vulnerable at this time. If you took a shedder (freshly moulted lobster) out of the water its claws would fall off, because it wouldn’t have the strength to keep them on. They eat their old shells to recycle the nutrients and help harden the new one.
4. Lobsters are cannibals. Along with marine worms, clams, mussels and Crabs, they’ll happily eat other lobsters.
5. They pee out of their faces. The glands that produce wee are located near their antennae.
6. Doing so is actually an important part of their courtship behaviour. When a female is ready to mate she goes to where the dominant male is hiding and pees at him. The pheromones in her wee tell him, “this is not dinner; this is something to have sex with.” That done, she moves into his shelter with him and moults so he can transfer his sperm into her. She’ll live with him until her new shell hardens and then leave. She can store the sperm for up to nine months. When her eggs are fertilised she carries them around on her tail for another few months. A large female lobster might carry as many as 40,000 eggs around with her.
7. Another function of lobster wee is to recognise other lobsters they have met, and fought, before. Scientists have observed that when a lobster meets a strange lobster, it will fight. If it meets one it has fought before and lost, it will back away. Blindfolding the lobsters makes no difference, so the scientists concluded they recognise one another by smell.
8. Lobster is generally seen today as an expensive dish, but in 19^th century Massachusetts, servants campaigned for a clause in their contracts to ensure their employers didn’t feed them lobster more than three times a week.
9. The largest lobster ever recorded was 4 feet long and weighed 44lb. It was caught in Nova Scotia in 1977. There’s evidence to suggest that in the past they could get even bigger – up to 6 feet long.
10. A 19^th century French writer called Gerard de Nerval kept a lobster as a pet. He would take it for walks in Paris using a blue ribbon as a lead. He once said, “Why should a lobster be any more ridiculous than a dog?” or any other animal, for that matter. He particularly liked lobsters because, he said, “They are peaceful, serious creatures. They know the secrets of the sea, they don't bark, and they don't gnaw upon one's monadic privacy like Dogs do.”

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