Six-Clawed Lobster, Lola, Sets Record at Maine Aquarium (VIDEO)
A six-clawed lobster was caught off the coast of Hyannis, Mass. Thursday, but instead of becoming a delicious dinner for a lucky diner, it will remain in an aquarium so spectators can see the strange mutation. While there have been a few variations of color regarding lobsters, few have seen one with so many claws.
The six-clawed lobster was named Lola by the men that caught her, Capt. Peter Brown and lobsterman Richard Figueiredo of the vessel Rachel Leah, who promptly brought her into the West Boothbay Harbor. The four-pound, hard-shelled lobster has one normal claw on one side, but a five-appendaged multi-claw on the other for a total of six claws.
"This claw deformity is a genetic mutation," Aimee Hayden-Roderiques, manager of the Maine State Aquarium, told WMTW-TV. "Sometimes they have this throughout their life, sometimes this happens during a regeneration from a damaged or lost claw."
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The segmented nature of lobsters and other insects make abnormalities like this possible; genes may give the wrong signal or multiple signals after injury, resulting in mutations. However, because lobsters need both claws to survive, it's rare to find one living with six claws, like Lola.
"I've seen a three-clawed lobster," Diane Cowan, a senior staff scientist at the Lobster Conservancy in Maine, told NBC News. "But six claws sounds like a lot of claws to me. As far as I know, six is a record."
Lola's deformity has earned her a place at the aquarium, where she will debut alongside other rare lobsters like blue ones, yellow ones and even half-and-half-colored ones.
"We're kind of the place for unusual lobsters," she told the Bangor Daily News. "Everyone who comes in wants to see the weird lobsters."
