Dude. Crustaceans. I thought I knew them. As a fauna enthusiast and as an eater of tasty things.

I really don’t eat that much shellfish. I consider most lobster to be a vehicle for delivering butter into my mouth.  I muse about who was the first person hungry enough to grab this buggy looking thing and decided it was going to be food.

Maine, Rock and Spiny are your basic lobster creatures that we eat here in North America. Because of classification, only some of them are considered ‘true’ lobsters, those that have claws. But this is gonna muddy the water up so let’s just use the general term for all ‘lobster’ type Decapods.

As so as you travel into farther waters there is a family tree we don’t experience very often.  Langoustine is a European variety that goes by a dozen names, Norway lobster, Lobsterette, Scampi, Dublin Bay Prawn. BTW this is common for a lot of seafood. Especially commercial. Look up names for Sea Bass. Or Salmon.

Then you go in the other direction and things get a little tropical and wild. The Rainbow Lobster deserves an honorable mention because it delivers exactly what it promises. it generally looks like you melted a box of crayons over it.

You already know about most of these. You’re a smart cookie. Your here for the good stuff. The brass tacks. The WTF.

The first time I saw one of these I broke my brain a bit because it looked like it was given shovels instead of claws. It’s part of the same family as the spiny lobster, living in warmer waters and just looking really shy.

Fossil records for the Slipper Lobster date back over 100 million years, making this one of the younger species of Decapoda.

But let’s not talk about the tasty bits. Let’s just enjoy this crazy looking thing and be happy we share a planet with this face.

I think it’s blushing.

It’s good to take time and think about the giant ecosystem we share with little Ruteger here. There are parts of this world still full of life we have yet to find. It’s joyous, curious and a little scary. Someday I will tell you about Coconut crabs.

Have a good life!

HNM