The American lobster lives along the east coast of North America from Labrador to Virginia.
Since it often makes its home in rock piles, it prefers areas with rocky bottoms, but it will also dig holes in sandy and muddy areas. During warmer months, the lobster lives close to shore, moving to deeper water during the winter.
Once ground up and used as fertilizer, the lobster is now prized as a delicacy. The lobster fishery in the Northeast United States is valued at about a quarter of a billion dollars a year.
There's an enormous size range among lobsters. Typically, they're from 12 to 36 inches in length and weigh from 1 to 3 pounds, but specimens have been found that weigh as much as 45 pounds.
The usual color is blackish-green, with red-tipped appendages. There are rare blue, red, white, and yellow lobster.
The lobster has two eyes on stalks and two pair of antennae. The first pair of antennae is short, the while second pair is longer than the animal's body.
There are five pairs of walking legs. The front pair have very large pincers (better known as claws) that are used for different purposes.
One front claw, usually the left one, is heavier and has rounded teeth. It's used to crush open other shellfish, such as clams and snails. The other is smaller, with more pointed teeth, and is used as a cutting instrument to tear food apart.
Lobsters hunt and forage at night, feeding mainly on clams, crabs, fish, mussels, sea stars, and sea urchins. They will also eat some vegetation and smaller creatures, such as worms.
The lobster uses its antennae and tiny sensing hairs on its body to locate food. After the food is crushed and torn apart by the claws, it's chewed in the lobster's stomach, which contains a "gastric mill," three grinding surfaces similar human molars.
The adult American lobster molts annually, and the female usually mates right after molting, while her new shell is still soft. Eggs are carried internally for 9 to 12 months and then spend about the same length of time attached to the "swimmerets," small fin-like appendages beneath her tail.
After the eggs hatch, the larvae float near the water's surface for a month or more and those that survive settle to the bottom and begin to develop into baby lobsters. A large female may carry more than 100,000 eggs, but only about two out of every 50,000 actually grow to adulthood.
In the first five to seven years of life, the lobster molts about 25 times. At this point, it weighs about a pound. Then the creature increases about 15 percent in length and about 40 percent in weight with each annual molt.
There's no way to determine a lobster's exact age. It's believed that some individuals may live up to 100 years, based on body size.