Wholesale Maine Lobsters Best Wholesale Lobster Prices Sold By The Pound
A Predatory male amongst other lobsters! SOME DOWN EAST HUMOR
Notice the Male Lobster has shed his shell
They do not appear to show any pain at having a claw
ripped off. Remorse maybe. Because once whipped by the local bully, the
loser stays clear of him. With his extremely tiny brain if it is one,
he might put two and two together and realize that he could end up with
no claws; a very precarious position. Or it may just be a chemical
reaction that is causing the lobsters behavior and not actually thinking.
Their so called brain is a tiny mass of ganglia behind their eyes. An
aggressive Maine lobster shows high levels of serotonin while a non aggressive
lobster shows low levels and will avoid fighting. Possibly the loss of
a claw triggers the serotonin production to stop thereby protecting the
injured lobster from getting another whoppin and prolonging it's life
(evolutionary wise it makes sense). The loser's claw will grow back
after a few molts. Until then it is called a cull lobster and a loser.
If it loses two, he is called a bullet, a real big loser. Losers don't
fight; they run away for another day.
Molting takes place in early
summer to fall when the water temperature rises and triggers the
lobster to move out of it's old shell because there is no more room to
grow inside the present shell. They go through an extraordinary process
to get out of the old shell. It is a very lengthy discussion and is too
scientific to read about here. The lobster pumps
itself up with water causing a crack in their carapace on their back
near the tail. It then deflates by removing all of the water in their
muscles and through a
very complex set of enzyme reactions prepares to move out. Their meat
turns to jelly allowing them to slip out of their shell. The best
example for describing how they do this is as if you had a pair of old
fashioned long johns on and took them off by exiting through the back
flap, tail first and folded over in two. Sounds difficult and many of
them don't make it and die in the process. Now they are known as a
shedder. A mating myth is that they mate for life. Good one. They
are polygamous. The female enters the big males den and gives him a
little blast of her homemade perfume and if she is accepted by not
being eaten; she enters the den. Before mating the female has to molt
(shed her hard shell}. The time passes and the male keeps poking her to
see if her shell is soft (nudge-nudge). So there she
is shell less and vulnerable because she has molted. The male
flips her over and it's over. The male is uncharacteristically tender & gentle with the molted female. Just a scratch on her skin would probably be the end for her.
Some time passes with the female remaining in the den until her shell
is
firm enough to move out. And move out she must or big boy will kill and
eat her. Seems they don't tolerate small talk easily. He then waits for
the next friendly female to come by for another go. The female waits sometimes for up to a year to fertilize her eggs. She then
deposits her eggs under her tail by gluing them together in
a pretty disgusting mass of eggs. They are dark olive brown in color.
If you saw a female with the egg mass under her tail; you would think that
something is horribly wrong with her. It looks like some tumorous mass
is growing under her tail. It is again the law for a lobster man to
have a female Maine lobster with eggs in his possession. They are
immediately returned to the sea.
