General Information
- Classification: Animalia, Arthropoda, Crustacea, Malacostraca,Decapoda, Nephropidae, Homarus, Homarus Americanus
- Weight: 1-1.25 lbs. (record 44 lbs.)
- Length: 25 inches (3.7ft record)
- Color: Blend of gray and green with splotches of brown. (turn red when cooked) Often times blue as in the image above.
- Lifespan: To reach a stage at which they are edible, it takes about 6-7 years, however, the American Lobster is known to live for over 100 years. Often times, they are considered immortal, however on the experimentation tab,/experimentation.html, new studies which have already debunked their immortality have begun to examine how and why they live for so long.
- Lobsters have two claws, one of which, the pincer, is used to extract meat from the inside of a shell that has been pulverized by the larger barbed claw, the crusher.
- A lobster's gender can be classified by the shapes of the swimmerets on the underside of its tail. In males, the are lunger and curve outwards a bit.
- Body Plan: The cephalothorax, which includes the cephalon (the head) and the thorax (the mid-section), is the body of the lobster and is covered by a protective hard shell called the carapace. The second part is the abdomen, or the tail. The 14 segments that are joined together to make up the cephalothorax are called somites which are connected by appendages.