New England AquariumWhy do I get to go live in an aquarium while all my friends die? Is it because I’m the prettiest?
Yes, we are aware that Halloween is over, but we were kind of busy a) dressing up and b) worrying about the end of the world. So we did not get around to letting you guys know about this really weird-looking lobster and his natural “outfit.” The fancy lobster was caught by a fisherman in Massachusetts and weighs one pound, all of which is pretty normal for a lobster. What’s not normal is his particolored shell, estimated to occur once in every 50 million lobsters.
These weird-looking lobsters are called splits, and in the last 10 years they’ve been found in Maine, Rhode Island, and Nova Scotia. They are thought to exist because of a cellular split when the lobster egg is fertilized by the lobster sperm, some time after the lobster dinner and movie.
This festive lobster was donated to the New England Aquarium, where it will sit around and suffer from survivor’s guilt because unlike its brethren, it’s not likely to get cooked. Which means we’ll never answer the question posed by “Henry” from the Yahoo message boards: “Wonder if one half tastes like lobster and the other half tastes like chicken.”
