European lobster

The European lobster is a large, armoured sea creature with a long body, a wide fan-shaped tail, and a pair of big front claws. Here is a surprise: while it is alive, it is a beautiful deep blue, with two long red feelers waving from its head. It only turns the famous "lobster red" after it has been cooked.

Lobsters are crustaceans, which makes them cousins of crabs and shrimp. Their two front claws are not the same. One is a stocky crusher claw, strong enough to crack open shells, and the other is a slimmer cutter claw for tearing food into pieces. Having one of each is like carrying a nutcracker in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other.

European lobsters live along rocky coasts, mostly around Britain and the rest of Europe. They tuck themselves into crevices and little burrows among the rocks during the day and come out at night to search the seabed for food. They are scavengers and hunters, eating shellfish, sea urchins, crabs, worms, and bits of anything they can find.

Lobsters wear their skeleton on the outside, like a suit of armour. Because the armour cannot stretch, a growing lobster has to wriggle out of its old shell and grow a new, bigger one, a bit like changing into a larger coat. This is called moulting, and a lobster can even grow back a claw or a leg it has lost.

A mother lobster is a careful parent. She carries thousands of tiny eggs tucked safely under her tail for up to a year, and fishers call her a "berried" lobster because the eggs look like little berries. European lobsters are listed as Least Concern, which means they are still common, though in some places people must be careful not to catch too many.