Are Shrimp the Bugs of the Sea? A Closer Look at Shrimp vs Bugs

This week, we’re going to dive right into crustaceans and how they are related to insects. But that’s not all. Lets also take a closer look at lobsters and learn some interesting history.

Welcome to episode 63 of Insects for fun! Only today we’re not talking about insects exclusively. This episode is a bridge to all the other episodes about crustaceans. There are a lot of them, and I don’t want to keep explaining how they relate to each other every time. SO! Here we go (underwater bubbles).

Do you remember the episode where I said that not all bugs are insects but all bugs are insects? Well, I have another one for you. Not all crustaceans are insects (HUH), but all insects are crustaceans. Also, spiders, scorpions, millipedes, centipedes, and horseshoe crabs are not crustaceans. This means that lobsters, shrimp, and crabs are more closely related to insects than to arachnids and those other creepy crawly arthropods. Let’s go back in time to where it all began which would be the Cambrian period. At this point in time, the earth did have land masses, but Pangea was not there. These land masses were very, very empty. Almost all life was still in the ocean and it was here that Crustaceans first came into existence.

What do crustaceans and insects have in common? They both have chitin-based exoskeletons and begin life as eggs and go through a series of molts to become adults. They also both have compound eyes and antennae! Yes, even crabs have antennae, and what’s even crazier is that crustaceans have two pairs of antennae, while insects only have one. But the similarities go deeper than this, and by that I’m referring to their insides. In order to carry oxygen, they both use the same proteins, and their circulatory systems are run by the same peptides. I think it’s safe to say that yes. Insects are crustaceans, and when we eat lobster, shrimp, and crab, we’re really just eating big bugs that live in the ocean.

But are lobsters really just roaches of the sea? Where did that myth come from? In the United States, lobsters were once called “the poor man’s chicken” or even “cockroaches of the sea.” In the 1600s and 1700s, lobsters’ full flavor had not yet been discovered, and people did not know how tasty they could be. There were so many lobsters that they washed up on the shore that no one knew what to do with them since they weren’t going to eat them. But the reason lobsters began to really pique people’s interest started with the transportation system. As more and more railroads were built and more and more people rode trains for longer periods of time, food had to be made available. What better food to offer than cheap, common lobster? As more and more people started eating lobster, they became interested in how to cook it, and now here we are. Lobster is considered a delicacy and fetches a high price.

This is what we know about crustaceans and the history of lobsters in the United States. Take a look at what a lobster really is and decide for yourself if they are, in fact, overpriced cockroaches.

There are different kinds of lobsters, and some crustaceans that are called lobsters are not at all lobsters. Today we are going to talk about clawed lobsters, which are in the family Nephropidae. There are only about 54 of them, which I find a bit odd, but I think there must be more since everyone says we know more about the sun than the oceans on Earth. These clawed lobsters have 10 legs but only 8 are used for walking. We eat big claws, which are made up of just one pair of three legs. The front three pairs all have claws.

Now here’s where it starts to get quite familiar… the body of a lobster contains three segments. It has a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. In most crustaceans, the head and thorax are joined together in a cephalothorax. Lobsters also have big compound eyes and three sets of antennae. The two long ones are used to feel the ground, and the others pick up chemicals and smells in the water. Some people may be curious about the smaller legs that a lobster has under its tail. They are called pleopods or swimmerets, and they help the lobster swim!

Most clawed lobsters are big, measuring between 25 and 50 cm (10 and 20 inches). I’m sure many of us have seen one type of them before, but it depends on where the species lives. It stands to reason that deep sea lobsters are smaller than big red Maine lobsters, for instance. Even the lobsters in Japan are pretty small. In fact, I think most things here are smaller than they are in the U.S.

And speaking of where they live, these lobsters can be found in all oceans, on sandy, rocky, and muddy floors, close to the shore or out past the continental shelf into the deep. The bigger lobsters are found farther out. Most of the time, lobsters move around by walking on the floor, but when they need to, they can move pretty quickly! To get away, they flick their tails and push themselves backwards, and their fastest speed was recorded at 11mph. They don’t just use their legs for walking though. They actually taste with the front walking legs. They also chew with their stomach, not their mouth. In their stomachs, they have something called a gastric mill, which is basically a food roller that breaks down everything. That’s why lobsters have big claws: they can’t just swallow things whole like birds do. They usually rip their food into smaller pieces before crushing them even more in their stomachs. The claws are used to open and eat crabs, clams, mussels, and sometimes even other lobsters. They can put up to 100 pounds of force on them.

And now let’s look at how long a lobster lives. There are rumors that these animals are incredibly tough, like roaches, and that they are biologically immortal! Let’s look at the facts. People and other animals are made to break down because as our cells divide and are born again, a small part of them doesn’t come back until the cells stop dividing altogether. This small tip at the end of our cells coding is called a telomere. If we compare this to fishing, it’s like never being able to replace the line on your rod. Since you don’t have a swivel, you have to cut your line just a bit every time you switch lures, and it keeps getting shorter until you can’t fish anymore. Lobsters, on the other hand, have an enzyme called telemorase that acts as a swivel so they can change lures without taking any line off. So yeah. Lobsters are in fact biologically immortal. If lobsters get more fertile as they age, then why do they die? Because as they age and grow, they have to keep shedding their skin, which takes more energy and calories. This means that lobsters don’t die of old age, but from being too tired to keep going. At some point, they can’t get enough food to replace their shells, and that’s the end of it. So, in our first example, the lobster’s fishing rod gets thicker and thicker until you can’t even lift it to go fishing. They can also regenerate limbs, but it’s going to take some time. For example a one pound lobster will need about 5 years to regrow one of its larger claws. And yes lobsters feel pain! I don’t care what chefs say or anyone in the food industry. They have sensitive hairs all over their body and an incredibly complex nervous system. There is so much misleading information made publicly available by people who really don’t have a clue. On the Maine Lobster Company website, I read that because bugs and lobsters don’t have brains, they don’t feel pain. (dumb dumb dumb dumb).

We’ve already talked about lobsters’ history as a food source, but did you know that they get grades? When a lobster is caught, it gets one of three grades: new shell, hard shell, or old shell. The price of each grade goes up with the hardness. The reason is that harder lobsters can be shipped further away, but the meat is coarser. New shell lobsters are incredibly fragile and cannot be transported far. The meat is tender and more sweet when compared with harder shelled lobsters. It’s a fun fact that lobster shells can be used to make golf balls! They look the same, but they only have 70% of the power.

It’s time to decide if lobsters are really roaches of the sea (drum roll): the answer is no! They look a lot alike, but they are not related enough on the family tree or even in appearance to be thought of as the same thing. There are definitely sea roaches though but that’s for another episode….

That’s all for today’s topic! If you liked the episode or the podcast, please rate and review it so that more people can find it. If you want bonus episodes about insect news and other interesting discoveries, you can find them at Patreon, along with vlogs. com/insects for fun. You can send me a listener submission on Instagram at insect(number)fun or through a Facebook message. You can also email me at [email protected]. com.

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