16/10/2021
Have you eaten some fresh seafood from the coast this summer? My husband got a craving for some fresh seafood last weekend. We went for a sight-seeing ride and ended up on the porch of a restaurant in Savannah eating fresh shrimp and oysters while watching the merchant ships pass by. There was a seaside festival under way in the park complete with a sax player there to serenade us. The musical melody floating on the wafts of fresh sea air gently delighted us in a relaxing and romantic ambience.
As we were leaving, I glanced inside the restaurant just in time to see a cook fish a lobster out of a tank, and remembered how much my parents used to claim that Danish Lobster Tails are the best-tasting food the sea offers.
A seafood clerk at a grocery store once explained to me that lobsters in bubbling tanks waiting around to be purchased or cooked are starved so that their digestive processes will stop. The lack of food combined with oxygenation in the tank keeps the lobsters calm and sedated.
Closer looks at lobsters reveal very complex and intricately designed creatures. New research into the social habits of spiny lobsters shows that much of their interaction with one another is based on their cooperation in social clusters to survive their many predators.
Apparently, humans are not the only ones who enjoy the taste of lobster, and these intelligent creatures prefer to hide in groups within large lairs to produce strength in numbers against their enemies.
For years, scientists had thought that lobsters were loners. Study of lobsters' lifestyle shows that they have their own complex, bustling society.
The average lobster spends many of its evening hours checking out newcomers and spying on neighbors. A lobster will walk to neighboring lobster shelters in rocks or other protective structures and stick its head in each one to see whether anyone is home.
If the neighbor is out, the spying lobster will inspect its neighbor's home. If someone is at home, the lobsters will face one another. If the visitor is larger than the ones already in the shelter, the larger lobster evicts everyone in the shelter.
As soon as everyone is out, the larger lobster allows everyone to return to their home.
Lobsters are not hermits, but prefer to live in pleasant companionship with one another. They often move to new neighborhoods or to new shelters within their own neighborhoods. Newcomers are checked out by all the residents.
There seems to be no limit to God's ability to make unique creatures and provide them with their own way of life. A lobster's senses of smell and taste are up to a million times more sensitive than ours. Scents are picked up by hair like tufts on its appendages.
When eating, the lobster carefully samples the scent of each item it eats. The lobster never seems to get bored with a long, leisurely sniff of each morsel. In fact, scientists have found that the nerve cells in a lobster's antennae and leg hairs are more specialized than those of any other creature.
The lobsters' two-week courtship and mating ritual is especially touching in its apparent affection. In many ways, lobster interaction seems almost human.
The ritual begins when a female that is ready to mate lingers near the shelter of a male. The male responds by fanning its swimmerets - the four pairs of paddles beneath its tail.
At this point, communication is taking place through chemical signals each is releasing into the water. If the male is a clawed lobster, it will show her its claws.
After a couple days of this, the female enters his shelter, where more chemical signals are traded. This is followed by a sort of boxing sequence with their claws.
This goes on for several days as she spends increasingly more time in the male's shelter.
When she is ready to mate, she will lift her claws above the male's head in an action biologists call "knighting." Her body then shrinks as she sheds her shell.
At first, the stripped female's body is as soft as a jellyfish and she cannot even stand up. Mating must take place very tenderly because the male with its sharp shell could severely damage the unprotected female.
After mating, the male will protect the female for up to a week until she grows a new shell.
The tenderness and affection in the lobsters' mating is amazing, although these creatures are so different from us.
This is because we both have the same Creator, Who is Himself the source of all tenderness, affection, and love.
