If you have a question about lobsters, or a question about my book, that was not answered in THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS or on the website, please send me your query. I will do my best to post answers to the most commonly asked questions below. Send your question to: trevor@trevorcorson.com Lobster FAQs Q: On the television show The L Word [a show about lesbians in Los Angeles], a lobster fact was recently mentioned. One of the characters claimed that in a pot of boiling water, male lobsters would form ladders with their claws to try to escape from death while female lobsters would intentionally pull one another down so they would all die together. Since you dispelled the lobster myth from the TV show Friends -- that lobsters mate for life -- could you shed some light on this subject? A: I tried contacting the writers of The L Word, but I got no response. I assume they invented this "fact" to serve as a convenient allegory. I have never run across any scientific evidence remotely suggestive of its validity. As I have pointed out elsewhere, a lobster has about 300,000 neurons in its nervous system. (By contrast, a human brain contains a hundred billion neurons, not including the rest of the nervous system.) The notion that lobsters would be able to choose altruism or vindictiveness toward each other in the face of death seems a bizarre and fantastical form of anthropomorphism. I forwarded The L Word question to an expert at the University of Maine's Lobster Institute who has studied various issues related to the cooking of lobsters. He had a similar reaction. But I am always ready to be surprised by new revelations about lobster behavior, and much of what we know about lobster life that is true seems equally unbelievable. If anything, the situation with male and female lobsters ought to be the reverse. If you've read THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS, you know that female lobsters maintain a sort of sisterhood and cooperate; males just fight all the time. Draw your own conclusions about parallels with human behavior -- lesbian or otherwise. Q: What do lobsters eat? A: Contrary to what most people think, lobsters aren't simply scavengers. They will eat dead fish, of course -- that's how they're lured to a trap. But lobsters hunt down a lot of live prey as well, including small fish, crabs, clams, snails, sea urchins, and worms. A naturalist who studied lobsters in a shallow cove during the late 1800s saw "the muddy bottom scored in all directions -- the work of lobsters in their search for clams. One is there reminded of a pasture in which the soil has been rooted up by pigs." Speaking of pigs, a biologist on a scuba dive a few years ago came across a lobster gnawing on a pork bone. Q: How long can lobsters live? A: The short answer is that we don't know. Fish have a bone inside their head that grows concentric rings like a tree trunk, but so far scientists have discovered no similar way to determine the age of a lobster. The problem is that the "bones" of a lobster are its shell -- like insects, crustaceans wear their skeletons on the outside -- and the shell is cast off every time the animal molts, leaving no trace of its age. But based on the size of the largest lobsters that have been caught, which are in the range of three to four feet long or more and weighing upwards of thirty pounds, biologists estimate that lobsters can live to be at least fifty years old, and probably significantly longer, if they avoid fishermen's traps. Q: Is it true that there are more lobsters today than in the time of Columbus? A: Yes, most likely. Before the arrival of European fishermen, vast schools of enormous codfish swarmed throughout the Gulf of Maine. Although the lobster today is considered Maine's most recognizable icon, a thousand years ago lobsters in the Gulf of Maine may well have been scarce refugees, surviving only in small numbers amidst a sea of enormous predatory cod. That said, in the past the lobsters that did survive grew to much greater sizes than they do today; nowadays, most are caught by lobstermen before they can grow much bigger than a few pounds. Q: What color is a lobster's blood? A: Basically it's colorless. However, on rare occasions a diner may encounter a lobster with blood that is dark greenish or blackish in color. You know you've got a female lobster on your hands then. Sometimes a female that has been developing eggs in her internal ovaries will fail to extrude the eggs onto her tail for further development. This aberration can be caused by any number of environmental factors, such as inhospitable water temperature or a threatening social scene, and will result in the eggs being reabsorbed into the lobster's blood stream, causing the blood to darken. A lobster that has reabsorbed her eggs is still perfectly safe to eat. Q: What's the best way to kill a lobster? A: Before putting lobsters in the pot, I kill them quickly so they won't suffer in the boiling water. I use a technique taught to me by a professional chef. It may seem a bit gruesome but it's effective and more humane than boiling them alive. Place the lobster upside down on a cutting board, and position the tip of the largest, heaviest kitchen knife you can find between the legs, about halfway down the body, edge of knife facing the animal's head. In two swift motions, first plunge the knife into the body and then pivot the knife edge down sharply to split the animal's head in half. The lobster's nervous system has no brain but rather a string of connected ganglia. The ganglia that control the rear legs and tail won't necessarily be completely severed by this process, and there may still be some reflexive movement, but the animal is no longer alive. Q: I swear I've heard a lobster screaming in the pot. Do they scream? A: Probably not. Spiny lobsters -- the clawless sort that live in the Caribbean -- are known to have a sonic muscle, and research is underway to see if they use sound for communication in any way. But when it comes to the clawed American lobster, so far scientists have found very little evidence that the animal produces any kind of sound. That said, occasionally scuba divers in New England do report hearing an intermittent clicking sound coming from a lobster den. As for a lobster making noise during cooking, a "screaming" sound could certainly be caused by steam escaping from one of a lobster's body cavities -- well after the animal is already deceased. Q: I remember my mother saying something about a piece of the lobster that was suppose to either be "lucky" or "sacred" if you got it but might have been poison if you ate it. I know it was underneath and maybe green. Does this ring a bell? A: The only thing I can imagine your mother was talking about is the "tomalley" -- an organ in the lobster that serves as the animal's combined liver and pancreas. Sometimes the tomalley is brownish in color, sometimes green. Many people consider the tomalley a delicacy, although your mother may have been tapping into a forgotten piece of folk wisdom when she said it could be poisonous. Because the organ is a combined liver and pancreas, it acts as a filter, removing toxins. The lobster's meat will be free of those toxins as a result, but the tomalley may accumulate them. I usually avoid eating the tomalley myself, for that reason. Q: Do lobsters mate for life? A: If you think lobsters mate for life, you definitely need to read THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS -- the truth is far more interesting. Strangely, many people believe that they do. In one episode of the popular TV show "Friends," when the characters Ross and Rachel finally get together, their friend Phoebe -- the sentimental one -- swoons and says, "See, he's her lobster." In fact, Rachel should have been offended by this comment. For starters, it meant that Ross was going to dump her after two weeks and then go on to mate with every other woman in the building.