My friend the lobsters

Over dinner tonight my dear pal Carrie says to me, "I would read your blog more but I'll tell you what I don't like about it -- that creepy bug thing in the background." Carrie now knows the story but you do not (except for you, Carrie), so let me tell you the about the wonderful animal that is Panulirus argus, or the Caribbean spiny lobster.

I met my first spiny lobster in my junior year of college, when I was doing a practicum at the aquarium. One day a week was spent doing animal husbandry with a gallery of temperate-water exhibits. On my first day, the aquarist who ran the gallery brought me around to each tank and showed me what animals were in each one, and what they needed every day. The biggest tank in the gallery was a grotto with some big groupers, and an old spiny lobster that was about two or three feet from one end to the other.

The aquarist lifted the lid over the tank, and the lobster crawled right up the side of it, grabbing onto the rim, a light's support, and the aquarist's arm. Spiny lobsters don't have the big claws that true lobsters have, just another pair of legs (which is what the claws evolved from) and a pair of long, thick antennae, so when this thing came up to the top of the water, hanging upside down with limbs flying everywhere and mouth parts grabbing in and out, it really did look more alien than anything I've ever seen in a movie. The aquarist gave it some capelin, which is sucked right down, and told me to watch my fingers around her (the lobster) because she'd grab anything that was the right shape and size.

Meanwhile, the lobster was still grabbing around with those legs -- now, these legs were about a foot and a half long each I believe, jointed in four places, covered with a thick off-white shell, and tipped with thick yellow bristles. Ten of these things were methodically grabbing about the surface of the water and the side of the tank, looking for more fish. She brushed the tip of one leg against the side of my hand, and then suddenly, dropped back down into the tank and scurried off into the corner.

I didn't know how neat this was at the time: Those yellow bristles are chemorecepters, kind of like extended taste buds, and what she was doing was literally tasting what she was stepping in to see if it was edible. She recognized the aquarist's taste and held onto her arm for support, but she didn't recognize me when she touched my hand, so she backed off.

Pretty quickly she learned my taste too, and was hanging off of my arm looking for fish when I came around. She died a year or two ago, and I was sad to hear it; I know it's odd to get emotionally attached to an arthropod, but she was a cool one, no doubt about that.