This is not the only enormous lobster to have been pulled from the ocean. A metre-long specimen, caught off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada in 1977, weighed in at 20.14 kilogrammes (44lbs 6oz) and currently holds the record as the world's heaviest marine crustacean. Lobsters may not be able to grow forever, but they can reach impressive sizes.Īmerican lobsters are larger and heavier than their European relatives. One lobster expert has suggested that that 10-15% of lobsters go out this way.
But for each successive moult, increasing amounts of energy are needed and eventually the cost is too high and lobsters can die, effectively from exhaustion. Over time, growth slows down and moulting becomes less frequent. When they are young, lobsters grow rapidly and moult multiple times a year. Lobsters can face death from predation, including by humans, or health issues such as shell disease.Īnother potential cause of death is inherently linked to their continuous growth. This contrasts with people, for example - we stop growing when we reach adulthood.īut lobsters and other decapods do eventually reach the end of their lives. Scientists call this indeterminate growth. Like many other decapod (ten-footed) crustaceans, lobsters continue to grow throughout their lives. While some animals, given the right circumstances, could be considered immortal, lobsters are not among them.
It's not entirely clear where this myth originated, but it is a claim that persists online, often in the form of memes. There were a few exceptions: one female had reached 72 years old. They found that, on average, male European lobsters live to 31 years old, and females to 54. Instead, scientists tried looking at the fat residue on the eyestalks, assuming older lobsters would have stored up more fat. The size and weight of the animal helps us guess their age, but it's not a reliable way to determine it accurately. Lobsters shed their entire exoskeleton when they grow and retain no hard structures. In a lot of other animals, experts can use growth bands left behind on hard structures, such as bones or scales, to determine the age of an individual.īut this method doesn't really work for lobsters.
Working out how old lobsters are can be difficult and scientists have tried a variety of methods. This is the group that includes well known commercially valuable species such as the European lobster ( Homarus gammarus) and American lobster ( Homarus americanus). While lots of animals are known as lobsters, for example, spiny lobsters, squat lobsters and slipper lobsters, this term is more formally used to refer to the crustaceans in the taxonomic family Nephropidae. Discover how long lobsters live, how big they get and why scientists think they don't act their age.
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