Known for its sweet, lean meat and crispy tendons, lobster is a highly prized delicacy. It is often prepared with herbs, a light butter and lemon juice to give it a fresh and zesty flavor.

Lobsters are bottom dwellers and eat clams, crabs, starfish and other marine animals. They can grow to be as large as three feet long, though smaller lobsters are a lot more common. They can also become cannibals and eat other lobsters.

Their body has 19 different parts, each covered by a section of their shell. They are able to grow back lost limbs when they molt their hard exoskeleton. They have a heart and central nervous system that lays in their abdomen.

They are able to “taste” with their feet and “hear” with a set of sensory hairs on their legs. These organs are called antennae, and they work in combination with the chemoreceptors in their antennules to detect odors or chemical signals in seawater that help them find food, choose a mate and decide whether or not danger is close.

The cephalothorax consists of five segments and includes the lobster’s walking legs. These are joined to the body on either side and end in a pair of pincers. The first claw is a chunkier one that is used for crushing, while the second is a thinner one that is used for pinching or ripping.

A lobster’s gills are located on the front part of its body, and they filter air from the sea. The gills are made up of 20 pairs of feather-like filaments situated around a central rod, and they are protected within the gill chambers on the cephalothorax.

There are also mouths on the underside of a lobster that are used to grip and swallow prey. The jaws are on the fourth segment of the cephalothorax and are used to chomp on a variety of things.

Unlike most other fish, lobsters have a brain in their throat, which is about the size of a grasshopper’s. The lobster’s eyes do not see color or images, but detect shadows and light. They also have teeth in their stomach that crush and chew up their food.

They also have a specialized digestive system that uses their oesophagus to digest food, and they have special enzymes in their mouths that allow them to break down proteins, carbohydrates and fats. Their gut has a lining that is about as strong as a car tire, protecting them against rocks on the ocean floor.

To protect themselves from predators, lobsters have many tiny nooks and crannies that they can hide in. These places are known as burrows and lobsters can stay in them for a period of time, even years.

When they’re ready to mate, male lobsters will suck on their female’s tail to attract her and get her to release eggs in their shell. During this mating process, the male’s swimmerets will change from a dark brown to a pale grey color and their shell will shrink.