Last year, a fisherman in Casco Bay on the Southern coast of Maine caught an exceedingly rare lobster with orange coloration. The odds of such a catch are about one-in-30-million, so the fisherman kindly donated the animal—named Peaches—to the University of New England. Now, the university has announced that Peaches is a new mom. More than a dozen of the baby lobsters share the orange coloration. (video below)
Professor Markus Frederich and student Ruby Motulsky of the Invertebrate Physiology Lab are attempting to "decode the molecular basis for rare shell discoloration."
"At this point, no one really knows in detail why some lobsters develop these multicolor variations, though we do have some theories," Frederich has said about the orange lobsters along with even rarer blue lobsters living at the lab. "We hope to use this gene expression research to study the molecular biology of these creatures in a way that is not harmful to the lobsters."
Previously:
• Man keeps grocery store lobster as a pet
• Fisherman finds a rare 1-in-100-million 'cotton candy'-colored lobster
