A Halloween-colored lobster has been captured off the coast of Massachusetts, a rare two-hued crustacean discovered just ahead of the end-of-fall holiday.
The Halloween-colored lobster was snagged by a Massachusetts fisherman last week, and is even rarer than some of the rare orange lobsters recently caught that in and of themselves are once-in-a-lifetime catches.
The Halloween-colored lobster was discovered in the Massachusetts waters by lobsterman Dana Duhaime, who named the rare beast “Pinchy” after Homer Simpson’s ill-fated pet lobster of the same moniker on a classic Simpsons episode.
While Homer’s Pinchy meets an untimely end, the Halloween-colored lobster is unlikely to be similarly killed by accident due to its rarity.
The Halloween-colored lobster has been donated to the New England Aquarium in Boston, where biologists explain to ABC that the black and orange water bug is indeed rarer than one in a million:
“Biologists there confirmed that Duhaime’s catch was no trick but a ‘split’ lobster that is characterized by two distinct colors on each side of its body, something that occurs once out of every 50 to 100 million lobsters, according to a release issued by the aquarium’s spokesman, Tony LaCasse.
“The split coloring in lobsters, LaCasse says, is caused by a ‘complete cellular division when the lobster egg is first fertilized.’ While the orange-and-black coloring of ‘Pinchy’ seems like a Halloween once-in-a-lifetime coincidence, it’s actually the most common color combination in splits, aquarium biologists report.”
The Halloween-colored lobster is in for a quarantine period, after which time he will be moved to an exhibit, where he can live out his days away from the threat of melted butter and a plastic bib.
