Topic of the Day: Your Friendly Neighborhood Lobster

It was a tough decision between the lobster or the squid. Today the lobster won, next post will be about a member of the cephalopod family. We take lobsters for granted, and often (if not always) overlook how cool they are.

Lobsters are crustaceans, which belong to the larger family of arthropods. That's right, it's related to spiders and insects. If you want to get technical, arthropods are species of animals that have tough exteriors (exoskeletons), segmentation, and jointed appendages.

The most common type of lobster you're likely to meet is the "clawed" lobster, though there are many species. Most people don't realize the colorful history of the lobster. Once considered the "poor man's" food, it was actually boycotted during colonial times because of its overabundance. Only in the 20th when the import/export industry became more efficient did the lobster become a favored luxury food. But, let's not think about our clawed friends in that way.

The common lobster likes to live a hermit type life. He'll hang out in rocky, continental shelf areas, spending most of his time hunting, eating, and growing. Because of its relation to the arthropod family lobsters molt. They must do so quickly, otherwise they become vulnerable to predators as well as risking injury to themselves. Lobsters can live to the ripe old age of 100. Because they take a considerable amount of time to mature before mating, and with the species population rapidly dwindling, it is now a law in lobster fishing that "adolescent" lobsters that are caught must be returned to the water.

An endearing quality about this animal, though not always to its benefit, is that it's built to swim one way: backwards. The way lobster traps work is that bait is anchored to the bottom of a wire cube. The lobster swims into the cage easily, but because it's oriented from the opposite end, it can't find its way back out. Thus it is stuck and at the mercy of Gorton the Fisherman. But that doesn't mean it can't walk...albeit very slowly...forwards. Walking behind a lobster is like walking behind a tourist in Times Square, you'd just rather not.

And who says lobsters can't be trendy? They grow in a variety of beautiful colors; blue, green, red, magenta, purple, and green. Not only this, but way back in our early history lobsters (as well as a variety of sea life) were worshipped. The super sophisticated Moche people of Peru knew what was up in respecting marine life, and that was back in 200 a.d.

So the next time you see a lobster, do not picture him naked with a side of drawn butter. Because lobsters hate nothing more than being objectified.