10 datos extraños sobre las langostas

Pero no piensas en todo eso cuando uno grande y rojo aterriza en tu plato. No hay nada como extraer grandes trozos de carne de langosta del caparazón, revolverlos en mantequilla tibia, agregar un chorrito de limón y saborear cada dulce y delicioso bocado.

Si bien la langosta generalmente se considera un plato principal gourmet, a la altura del filet mignon, ese no siempre fue el caso. Las langostas alguna vez fueron tan abundantes en Nueva Inglaterra que podían capturarse fácilmente en la orilla y eran consumidas principalmente por personas pobres y prisioneros.

Veamos este y otros nueve hechos extraños sobre las langostas. (A los efectos de este artículo, nos centraremos principalmente en la langosta americana o de Maine). Siga leyendo para descubrir cómo la familiaridad genera desprecio.

1. La langosta alguna vez fue comida para los pobres
2. No son (generalmente) rojos antes de cocinar
3. Las langostas se orinan en la cara
4. Las langostas tienen dos estómagos
5. Perder una garra no es gran cosa
6. no hacen ruido
7. Las relaciones duran alrededor de dos semanas
8. Las hembras llevan espermatozoides vivos hasta los dos años
9. Las langostas pueden ser caníbales
10. No muestran signos de envejecimiento

Las langostas se consideraban un manjar durante la Edad Media en Europa, e incluso servían como medicina. La tribuna , o parte frontal del cuerpo, fue pulverizada y utilizada para ayudar a las personas a eliminar los cálculos renales . El gastrolito , o piedra de molleja que usa la langosta para ayudar a triturar los alimentos, fue útil para tratar los dolores de estómago [fuente: Lobster Conservancy ].

Avance rápido unos cientos de años y las actitudes cambiaron drásticamente. La langosta era tan abundante en la Nueva Inglaterra del siglo XVIII y principios del XIX que se alimentaba a los cerdos y las conchas se usaban como fertilizante. Los sirvientes contratados en Massachusetts estaban tan hartos de comerlo que ganaron un caso judicial para evitar que sus amos les dieran de comer langosta más de tres veces a la semana [fuente: Dembosky ].

El primer cambio hacia la comida de lujo tuvo lugar a fines del siglo XIX, cuando los habitantes adinerados de la ciudad acudían en masa a la playa y disfrutaban del sabor novedoso (para ellos) de la langosta. Los avances en refrigeración permitieron transportar vivos por todo el país. A medida que aumentaba la demanda, disminuía la oferta, lo que elevaba el precio. La oferta y la demanda han tenido altibajos a lo largo de los años, pero en estos días la langosta se considera un alimento elegante.

En la naturaleza, la mayoría de las langostas son de color marrón verdoso moteado. Se vuelven rojos cuando se cocinan porque el calor rompe el vínculo entre la pigmentación y la proteína en la cáscara. El color rojo proviene de la expresión de astaxantina , un tipo de pigmento carotenoide que se encuentra en las plantas de color naranja, consumido por los animales que come la langosta [fuente: Cowan ].

Una pequeña cantidad de langostas pueden ser rojas antes de ser cocinadas , así como también anaranjadas, amarillas, verdes, azules y varias combinaciones de estos colores. En algunos casos, estos tonos son una mutación genética. Otras veces, tiene que ver con la comida que come la langosta; si solo tiene un tipo de alimento disponible, puede convertirse en un color sólido como resultado [fuente: Cowan ].

Hasta ahora nos hemos estado refiriendo a la langosta americana. Este crustáceo de grandes garras se encuentra frente a la costa este de Canadá y los Estados Unidos. Su prima, la langosta europea, tiene pinzas más pequeñas y su color natural es azul oscuro con manchas y el vientre amarillo. Se había encontrado en las aguas alrededor de Europa occidental y el norte de África. Las langostas sin garras, llamadas langostas de roca o langostas espinosas, se encuentran en aguas más cálidas de todo el mundo y vienen en una variedad de colores [fuentes: Instituto de Investigación del Golfo de Maine , Observatorio Global de St. Lawrence ].

You might look a little differently at the next lobster you see when you learn how they excrete their waste. Good thing we don't eat their faces, right? A lobster pees from openings (nephrophores) located at the base of its second antennae. These excretory organs are called green glands and include a sac linked to a bladder by a coiled tube [source: Lobster Conservancy].

Lobsters also excrete from other places on their bodies, including their gills and digestive glands. Excreting from the nephrophores isn't just about getting rid of toxic waste products, though -- it's part of the lobster mating ritual.

Male lobsters love to fight. Female lobsters seek out the most aggressive, dominant male in the area and show their interest by peeing repeatedly into his shelter. Their urine contains pheromones , which calm him down and get him in the mood, so to speak. Lobsters also urinate in each others' faces during fights to express themselves [source: Markey].

Just in case peeing from their faces isn't unusual enough for you, lobsters have some other unique anatomical characteristics. A lobster's eyes at the base of its antennae detect light and shadows, but not colors or images -- most of its seeing is done with its three pairs of antennae. The large pair is used for feeling around and the smaller two pairs help it navigate via smell [source: Lobster Conservancy]. An appendage between its eyes called a rostrum often gets mistaken for a nose, but it's just there to protect the eyes during fights.

And that's not all. Lobsters have two stomachs. One is located in what we'd consider the lobster's head -- right behind its eyes. This stomach contains teeth-like features (called a gastric mill) that are used to crush the lobster's food. Once the food is fine enough, it passes to the other stomach. Most of a lobster's abdomen is taken up by a digestive gland that serves as the filtration system -- sort of like your liver. Called the tomalley, it turns green when cooked, and some consider it a delicacy [source: Lobster Conservancy].

Clawed lobsters typically have two differently-sized pincers. The larger of the two is the crusher, and it's used for -- you guessed it -- crushing through the shells and carapaces of its prey. The smaller of the two claws, the cutter or seizer, grabs onto meat and shreds it into smaller pieces so that the smallest antennae can carry it into the lobster's mouth.

Lobsters tend to have a dominant claw -- meaning that they are either right-clawed or left-clawed -- and their crusher claw can be on either side. Juvenile lobsters start out with two cutters, and one develops into a crusher over time as the lobster locates objects to pick up. Scientists have been able to induce lobsters to avoid developing a crusher claw, but not to generate two crushers -- those have only been seen in the wild [source: Cowan].

No matter which claw is dominant, the lobster isn't all that attached to it -- literally. If a lobster loses a claw or leg, it will grow another when molting. Molting happens several times a year until the lobster is a full-sized adult. During molting the carapace splits and every hard piece is shed. Any missing limbs regrow during this time, and are identical to the original. A lobster can also drop a limb or claw if necessary to save its life, such as to get away from a predator. This adaptive phenomenon is called autotomy or reflex amputation [sources: McCarthy, NOAA Fisheries Service].

Some people avoid cooking lobster at home because of the way that they're normally dispatched -- headfirst, live, into a pot of boiling water. Some home cooks have been horrified by sounds coming from the inside of the pot -- noises, which they believe, are the lobster screaming in pain as it dies. The thing is, lobster don't have vocal cords or any way of making noise. The sounds heard are probably air escaping from the lobster's shell. There may be a crackling noise from live lobsters as they rub their legs, together, but that's about it.

So if they're not screaming, do they feel pain at all? That's a matter of some debate. Some researchers claim that they don't because they lack a complex nervous system or brain like vertebrates do. A 2005 study by the Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food Safety concluded that any violent reaction by the lobster to being cooked is a reflexive response to an unpleasant stimuli, called nociception -- not the same thing as pain and suffering. But a 2013 study conducted at Queen's University Belfast in the U.K. had the opposite conclusion [source: Cressey]. The jury's still out, so if you love to eat lobster but want to know it's being prepared in the most humane way possible, seek out restaurants that use a CrustaStun, a machine that quickly kills lobster and other crustaceans via electrocution.

In a 1996 episode of the sitcom "Friends," the character Phoebe compared Ross and Rachel's turbulent romance to those of lobsters, stating, "It's a known fact that lobsters fall in love and mate for life." There are earlier examples of this theory as well, but it's simply not true. As we mentioned before, a female lobster visits the most dominant male in the neighborhood and entices him into mating by peeing in his shelter. After several visits, the male gets the message and lobster love ensues. First the female has to disrobe, err, molt. After the deed is done, she hangs around until her shell has re-grown, then takes off. The whole rendezvous takes between 10 days and two weeks [source: Markey].

But then another female comes by and does the same thing. And another... and another ... until all the female lobsters around have mated with the dominant male lobster. So instead of mating for life, lobsters are serial monogamists, having one exclusive, but very short-term, relationship after another [source: Markey]. If you're a fan of "Friends" you know that Ross and Rachel did eventually end up together -- after 10 seasons and numerous other relationships.

When lobsters mate, the male deposits his sperm into the female before she leaves, but that doesn't mean that her eggs are fertilized right away. In some cases he hasn't provided enough sperm to fertilize all of her eggs -- there could be tens of thousands of them -- so she may seek out one or more additional males to get the job done [source: Gosselin]. But even then her eggs might not be fertilized, because the female decides when conditions are just right. She may store live sperm in her body for two years before using them to fertilize her eggs [source: NOAA Fisheries Service].

Once the lobster fertilizes the eggs, they may stay inside her for another year before she lays them. And then they can stay attached to her swimmerets -- the small legs under her tail -- for another 9 to 11 months [source: Cowan].

After they hatch, the larvae float for about a month before settling on the bottom of the ocean to grow. Only 1 percent of larvae make it to the bottom and in general, just two of every 50,000 eggs live long enough to become adult lobsters of catchable size [source: NOAA Fisheries Service]. The lengthy life cycle and small payoff help explain why female lobsters are discriminating about when they decide to fertilize and lay their eggs.

One reason why more baby lobsters don't make it to adulthood? They tend to turn on each other. After hatching, lobsters go through numerous stages of development. Once they start to actually look like little lobsters, they're not just floating along and eating zooplankton, fish eggs and other types of larvae anymore. They're competing for food and going after prey like crab, gastropods, starfish and marine worms [source: St. Lawrence Global Observatory]. In close quarters, these juveniles will eat each other without any qualms. This behavior is part of why lobsters aren't often raised in captivity -- they have to be separated into individual containers [source: Anderson].

This cannibalistic behavior isn't limited to baby lobsters, though. It's common for adults to eat juveniles or lobsters that have just molted when they're in traps or tanks. Until recently, though, researchers hadn't witnessed this type of behavior in the wild. Then in 2012, scientists in Maine filmed lobsters practicing infanticide. They tethered a juvenile lobster, figuring that its natural predators, such as cod and skate, would take advantage. At night, though, adult lobsters fought over it. The cannibalism was blamed on a recent glut of lobsters. Warmer waters and overfishing practices had reduced the populations of their natural predators [source: Doucleff].

If you believe everything you read, you may recall seeing a lobster meme in the summer of 2013 -- a photo of a lobster with the phrase "biologically immortal, delicious with butter." I can attest to the latter part, but the former isn't true. Lobsters don't age in the same way as most other animals – they don't get weaker or lose their ability to reproduce, and will keep on molting and growing. However, that doesn't mean that they live forever. At some point, even if they aren't caught, they die due to natural causes. Often this is because they run out of energy to molt at all and not molting leads to fatal diseases [source: Koren].

So, we know that lobsters eventually die, but we aren't quite sure when. Lobsters reach their adult size when they weigh between 1.5 and 2 pounds (680 and 907 grams), but the heaviest one ever caught clocked in at 44 pounds (20 kilograms) [source: BBC]. Some estimate that lobsters in the wild can live up to 50 years.

Scientists estimate a lobster's age by measuring levels of materials known to accumulate in its body over time, such as deposits of fat in its eyestalks or a pigment called eurolipofuscin in its brain [source: Koren]. The latest research indicates that the best way to estimate lobster age may be by counting age bands well hidden inside the gastric mill in one of its stomachs [source: Poppick].

Author's Note: 10 Unusual Lobster Facts

The entire time I was writing this article, I kept craving lobster. I've never ordered a whole one because I'm pretty sure I'd end up covering myself and other diners with pieces of it. And although I love to cook, I've never attempted a whole fresh lobster. I'm of the mind that lobsters probably don't suffer much if at all, but I still feel squeamish about cooking my own live food.

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