Cruel new fact of crustacean life: lobster cannibalism
LITTLETON, New Hampshire | LITTLETON, New Hampshire (Reuters) -
Researchers studying Maine's lobster population, booming in
recent years amid warming waters and disappearing predators,
have detected something never before seen in the wild: lobster
cannibalism. It has long been known that lobsters will attack
and eat each other if confined together in a small space — hence
the banding of claws on lobsters in supermarket tanks. That
aggressive behavior had not been thought to occur in the wild,
but with the increasing density of the crustaceans in the Gulf
of Maine it seems big lobsters are feasting on little lobsters
once the sun goes down. "We've got the lobsters feeding back on
themselves just because they're so abundant," said Richard
Wahle, a marine sciences professor at the University of Maine,
who is supervising the research. "It's never been observed just
out in the open like this," he said. Maine's lobster catch rose
to a record 104 million pounds