Lowdown on lobster

We've already established that lobsters don't scream.

Here are some other fun and interesting things about those crusty crustaceans you might not have known.

1. Lobsters continue to grow, reaching 20 to 30 pounds and larger, and can live to be 100 years old. Since traps are not designed to catch these behemoths, we don't usually see them. Sometimes they'll reach into a trap with a claw and get stuck and get brought up.

Bigger lobsters are usually set free and returned to the water, as they are considered breeding stock.

2. In order to grow, lobsters must shed their shells. They are not by nature cannibals, but they will eat each other when searching for fresh food if the need arises. Otherwise, they prefer crabs, sea stars and sea urchins.

3. Lobsters identify their food with their legs and feet via tiny hairs. The small antennae in front of their eyes also track down food. Once it locates and stabilizes its next meal, the lobster will grind it with a set of teeth, or gastric mill, located in its stomach.

4. A lobster claw can exert up to 100 pounds of pressure per square inch. I fondly remember Capt. Dick up in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, who was missing an arm. I'm not saying a lobster got him, but I'm not saying it didn't. The claw looks like it has molars, which it uses to break up anything hard, like clams or crabs (fingers?). The other claw, called a ripper, tears at soft foods, such as fish. Those claws are also pretty amazing in another way. It may take years, but a lobster can regenerate limbs.

5. Usually when you see a lobster floating around the tank at your local Red Lobster, it's a mottled dark green in color. Did you know they could also be two-toned? The odds are 1 in 50 million, but it happens. Last year a lobsterman near Scarborough, Maine, pulled up a lobster that was part brown and part orange. I saw one a few years ago that was a deep, dark blue.

6. You know all that yucky green stuff you see when you cook a lobster. It's called "tomalley." What's that you say? It's the intestine, liver and pancreas. (Well, you asked!)

7. A professor at the University of Maine created golf balls with the core made out of lobster shells. The balls travel only about 70 percent of the distance of a regular golf ball, but since they are biodegradable, they are used for golfing on cruise ships and on courses near bodies of water.

8. Back in the Colonial days, lobsters were so cheap and plentiful, and considered tasteless, they were used to feed prisoners and the poor. In fact, in Massachusetts indentured servants were so sick of eating lobster, they won a court order forbidding their masters from feeding it to them more than three times per week.

9. Lobstering can be dangerous. Traps are connected to the boat by lengths of line. As the boat moves, if a lobsterman gets a hand or foot tangled in the line, he could end up in the water, and dragged to the bottom. The temperature of the Atlantic, especially in the winter, can cause death relatively quickly.

Deaths have most often occurred when the lobsterman is out working alone. Full-time lobstermen work year round. In addition to the cold, rugged weather off the coast of New England, the salt spray often causes an icy slush to form on the deck as well as the lobstermen himself, making the process even more dangerous and uncomfortable.

10. The lobster mating ritual is just too weird and inappropriate to include, but it's certainly worth checking out. If you're interested, I recommend this article from National Geographic, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/08/0824_040824_lobster.html.

Information from Time NewsFeed, How Stuff Works and the Lobster Conservancy.