Maine Lobsters Are Cannibals: They Eat Their Youngsters

If you have ever had the pleasure of cracking into a freshly broiled Maine lobster, then you probably know just how succulent these marine crustaceans can be. But its not just us that find these creatures delectable; it seems the lobster itself cannot resist snacking on its fellow arthropods from time to time.

Lobsters have long been known to attack and eat each other within the confines of a trap or tank, but scientists from the University of Maine have captured new video evidence of adult lobsters eating their younger counterparts in the wild.

The Maine researchers speculated that the exploding lobster population off the coast of the Pine Tree State is the primary driver of this never-before-seen behavior.

“We’ve got the lobsters feeding back on themselves just because they’re so abundant,” research team member Richard Wahle, a marine sciences professor at the university, told Reuters. “It’s never been observed just out in the open like this.”

He noted that a group of Canadian researchers had recently observed evidence of cannibalism in the stomachs of wild-caught lobsters from the same region.

“There are these cases where encounters with each other are becoming so frequent, they result in more than just a bit of competition but in a predator-prey interaction,” Wahle added.

In their experiment, the researchers set out to observe the predation of small lobsters, which they tethered with a rope to the sea floor. Using a special infrared camera, they expected to see larger fish prey on their bait.

“We were hoping just to see that maybe they were being untouched or that perhaps there were still fish and maybe there was just a different predator assemblage,” co-researcher Noah Oppenheim, a graduate student at the school, told the Portland Press Herald.

Continued:  http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112741632/maine-lobsters-eat-youngsters-120412/