Lobsters, like most animals, need to reproduce and have lots of offspring to ensure the survival of their species. Lobsters, just like us humans, have males and females but unlike humans, lobsters have a very unusual way of attracting a mate for breeding. And once you see how they reproduce, you might not want to order one of these delicious crustaceans for dinner the next time you go out on the town!
Lobsters, like most animals, need to reproduce and have lots of offspring to ensure the survival of their species. Lobsters, just like us humans, have males and females but unlike humans, lobsters have a very unusual way of attracting a mate for breeding. And once you see how they reproduce, you might not want to order one of these delicious crustaceans for dinner the next time you go out on the town!
Male lobsters grow much larger than females and they can be the bullies of the reef in the lobster neighborhood. Lobsters have a mouth for eating just like we do and they feed on seaweed and dead marine life. Us divers call them cockroaches of the sea.
We humans, like most animals, feed from one end of our body and then eliminate urine from the opposite end so our waste won’t pollute our food. Lobsters, on the other hand, store urine right under their brain as it is useful at finding a mate.
Lobsters have a good sense of smell but they do not have a nose for smelling like us. They have fine hairs on a small set of antennae they move around to pick up chemicals in the water to detect food, predators and other lobsters.
Large male lobsters are dominant out on the reef and they will fight for the best home on the reef which is usually a small cave just big enough for himself and a girlfriend. The way the large male lobster chases smaller males out of their caves, if he thinks it is the best cave on the reef, is by shooting a jet of urine onto the smaller lobsters face.
This urine comes from a hole on the lobster’s head and is shot out with force! The big males basically pee on their buddies to get the best home on the reef in a type of chemical warfare. The larger the males means more pee to scare away the smaller male.
When a female lobster is ready to breed, she locates a large male with a good safe cave and approaches from an angle to sneak up on her potential mate. She doesn’t want to get peed on by the large male so she has developed a way to mellow him out for a while to win over his affection.
When she sneaks up on the male, she will send a jet of pee from her own head into the male’s cave. then zoom away and hide. She will repeat this hit-and-run tactic of chemical attraction for up to a dozen times until lots of her urine fills the male’s cave, which acts like an aphrodisiac and slowly turns the aggressive male from a fighter to a lover.
Once the female has tamed her male partner, she will move into his nice large house for about a week so the couple can produce eggs and sperm and fertilize hundreds of thousands of new baby lobsters.
I have studied lobsters all around the world and watched them fight for a place on the reef but never new they used jets of urine from their head to be king and queen of the reef until a chemical study was done on captive lobsters during mating.
I am producing a new movie called “Lobsters from the Reef to the Dinner Plate” which captures this unusual mating dance and the behavior of lobsters from around the world. You can view the new movie when it comes out by subscribing to my YouTube channel at Underwater2web.
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Terry Lilley is a marine biologist living in Hanalei and co-founder of Reef Guardians Hawaii, a nonprofit on a mission to provide education and resources to protect the coral reef. To donate to Reef Guardians Hawaii, go to reefguardians.org
