One of the most curious creatures to be found in the sea is the lobster. It is a “crustacean,” which means a hard-shelled animal, and it is related to the crawfish, the shrimp, and the prawn.

There are three species of true lobsters. American lobsters, which live all along the Atlantic coast from Labrador to North Carolina, are the biggest members of the family. Next in size is the European lobster, which is found on the eastern shores of the Atlantic. The smallest lobster is the African species found off the Cape of Good Hope.

The lobster is encased in a suit of armor made of hard shell. This is usually dark green in color but turns red when the lobster is boiled. The shell covering the front part of the body is practically solid. The rest of the shell is divided into seven segments, the last of which forms the tail.

Lobsters have four pairs of walking legs, two pairs of which have small pincers for feet. In front of these are the great claws. They serve as hands rather than as feet. One of them, the club, is very thick and heavy, and is used for crushing tender objects. The other, the fish claw, is more slender, curved, and provided with many sharp teeth. It is used to seize prey or enemies.

Lobsters usually walk about at the bottom of the sea balanced on the tips of their walking legs. When they are alarmed they make backward leaps through the water covering as much as 7.5 meters at a time. They dart backward by powerfully jerking their paddle-equipped tails down and forward.

The female lobster lays from 5,000 to 100,000 eggs. She carries them about for some ten months, glued to the swimmerets under her tail. As soon as they hatch, the mother fans the babies away and they start on their own adventures.

If the lobster has a hard shell, how does it grow? All through its life, the lobster molts. This means it sheds its armor whenever it out-grows it. During its first year, it molts fourteen to seventeen times, but when it grows older it molts not more than once a year.

The little lobster swims at the surface for six to eight weeks, during which period it can easily become a meal for some other animal. If it lives, it finally sinks down and makes its home on the bottom, in shallow water.