Lobsters are not Immortal. Have you ever given the idea of immortal lobsters any thought? The lobster, a wealthy aquatic animal, is physiologically unchangeable.
Contrary to popular belief, lobsters are immortal. If not eaten or suffer from a peculiar ailment, they can live up to 140 years. Although they do not know their age, lobsters do die like people.
They molt when they get big and grow. Since older lobsters are known to stop molting due to lack of energy, they will likely get harmed, become unwell, or have their shell fall apart.
It causes their death. Only a portion of the digestive system molts along with the shell and develops into a new organ. But not the entire organ, which is required for maintaining life functions like the heart.
But it seems they are doomed to eternal death, like all living creatures continuously generate telomerase.
The oldest collected was believed to be 140 years old and weighed roughly 20 kg. As a result, it grows more significant with age rather than getting weaker.
If all the right factors are there, lobsters will always grow. It means lobsters are immortal. But then, find out.
Why Are Lobsters Immortal?
Telomeres are the key to aging, which is why lobsters are immortal. These resemble chromosomal caps that shrink with each cell division.
The cell is unable to divide if the telomeres are too short.
Because telomeres cannot be stretched, the number of times that cells can divide in humans is constrained.
To put it another way, this is life. Everyone perishes because of the Hayflick limit, the upper limit on the number of cell divisions.
The cell stops dividing when the telomeres reach a particular length. The enzyme that renews telomeres, telomerase, declines as people age.
Therefore, death is pre-programmed. However, even a lobster with an endless supply of telomerase is not immune to mortality.
Entropy is permanently lost. I must recognize it as a lobster.
Due to molting, a giant lobster that has lived for a long time would not be edible. But it could perish from a lack of vitality.
Additionally, the shell gathers bacteria and parasites encased in their skeletons.
All living things duplicate their DNA through the action of certain enzymes that bind to the telomeres at the ends of their chromosomes.
After the duplication, the enzymes separate, removing a portion of the telomere.
Another enzyme, telomerase, corrects the issue by restoring the telomere to its ideal size.
This telomerase stops functioning as the years go by, and the telomeres get shorter and shorter until the cells lose the ability to repeat their DNA and, as a result, their telomeres.
It is the main factor in aging and why lobsters never age. Since telomerase never stops working in lobsters, there is no cellular aging.
Telomerase is particularly abundant in “Green Spotted” lobsters, whose patterns are believed to be the result of the enzyme’s interaction with the pigment in their shells.
Why Can Lobsters Live Forever?
Lobsters can live forever because they are biologically immortal, their cells never become old, and they do not age.
If they lived forever, oceans and seas would have been saturated with lobsters.
Being biologically immortal does not preclude one from experiencing mortality; there are always lobsters to eat.
They develop throughout their lifetimes as well. Does that imply that the ocean is teeming with enormous, 2,000-year-old lobsters?
No, because when lobsters are growing, there comes the point when they are so huge that their shell is so hard.
Anytime they have to break it to move, they use a lot of energy and pass out from weariness.
In other words, lobsters are immortal, yet they pass away because they grow weary of being themselves.
According to research on American lobsters, their cells have an endless supply of the telomerase enzyme, which may explain why these creatures don’t appear to slow down as they age.
By reproducing telomers and delaying senescence, this enzyme can prolong the life of a cell, much like a cellular fountain of youth.
For their part, lobsters do not appear to undergo degenerative changes as they age.
Older animals are also more robust, fertile, and larger than young ones.
They only succumb to infectious diseases when they are hunted because their continued growth makes their larger prey more intimidating.
A typical lobster can molt 44 times before it is a year old. Lobsters grow by molting their hard exoskeleton.
Due to a never-ending supply of an enzyme called telomerase, which keeps rebuilding telomeres, lobsters don’t have this issue.
Throughout their adult lives, they continuously create large amounts of this enzyme in their cells, enabling them to keep their young DNA.
The opposite of mortal or dead is immortal.
Why do lobsters still die naturally?
They are not genuinely immortal; nonetheless, lobsters still die naturally. These creatures have an infinite lifetime.
Unlike humans and most other animals, they never experience a regenerative system failure.
Individuals are more likely to pass away due to accidents, mutilations, traumas, etc.
The presence of these beings is intriguing since it raises the possibility of genetically modifying any being to extend their lives indefinitely.
Because of their uncertain growth, lobsters continue growing throughout their lives, at least on the surface.
They are, however, confined inside a solid shell that must be shed as they grow, in contrast to us, who have soft bodies in meat sacks.
This molting process uses a lot of energy, and the larger the shell, the more energy is required.
Giant lobsters frequently die from exhaustion during the molting process.
However, if they survive, their available metabolic energy eventually exhausts, making it impossible for them to continue losing weight.
As they grow larger, they cannot store energy for future growth spurts.
They can only consume enough food to maintain their current bodies.
While there is no evidence that lobsters may live indefinitely, it is uncertain what their maximum lifespan is.
It is thought that they can live for more than 100 years.
As they age, lobsters molt and shed their shells to develop new, larger ones, which is how they grow.
As a result, a lobster’s size is a trustworthy age indicator. In 1926, people spotted a 23.5-kilogram lobster.
At this time, without the option for rejuvenation through development, daily nicks and scrapes increase damage to its shell, leading to anything from shell disease.
When bacteria penetrate and infect the frail lobster underneath until their shells nearly waste away, they grow until they cease.
At that point, they lose the ability to create new bodies.
How old was the oldest lobster?
A 44-pound lobster was the largest ever discovered. The oldest lobster in captivity was between 132 and 140 years old and weighed 22 pounds.
When you wonder why no one tried to expand one into anything enormous, it would depend on why anyone would want to do that.
I am providing those two data points as a point of reference.
When expenditures are considered, growing a 3-pound lobster takes less time than farming a 20-pound lobster.
It is why most people want to avoid buying them for commercial purposes.
The underlying science of lobsters growing without aging is new if it took 140 years to farm a 22-pound lobster.
Someone would have started cultivating lobster hundreds of years ago if you meant the sheer spectacle of raising such a giant lobster.
It would be unlikely to observe a giant lobster unless someone kept watching it.
That is a little ludicrous to claim that no creature ever dies of “old age” in terms of biological aging.
Sadly, aging and mortality risks like cancer, organ failure, and a decline in immune system function are strongly correlated.
“Immortal” lobsters would occasionally molt, resulting in claw shells the size of rowboats if they survived for 600 years.
But they have yet to be discovered or made known.
However, they remain within the range, indicating that the maximum age is between 100 and 125 years.
Occasionally, even larger claw shells have been discovered in truly enormous lobsters.
I have. But that presumption is incorrect if you discover a husk the size of a rowboat.
Why can’t lobsters die of old age?
Lobsters cannot die of old age because they claim to be immortal.
There is some validity to the claim that lobsters live longer than people and continue to grow as they age.
They cannot, however, continue to expand eternally. Exoskeletons are found on lobsters.
They must molt to grow, shedding their exoskeleton and developing a new one.
However, the bigger they get, the more difficult it is to shed. It is risky, challenging, and energy-intensive to molt.
A lobster can pass away during its molt at any age.
The risks of the animal dying during the molt rise as it becomes bigger and bigger, placing a more significant strain on its body.
When a species of lobster reaches a specific age, they stop molting.
But that raises a new issue. Skin is not like an exoskeleton.
If it is broken, it cannot be fixed.
Animals with exoskeletons molt because there is no other way to repair damage to an exoskeleton than to throw it away and build a new one.
The infection will eventually cause the lobster to get a wound, which will be too late.
However, their body’s ability to support that organ decreases as they age.
Thus, when we say someone died of old age, we mean that they died of a condition like cardiovascular disease.
In that situation, the lobsters pass away from old age, possibly due to a shell infection.
But not the same type of “old age” that kills people.
Organ failure and the like do not affect them. It is true that their cells age “slowly” and can “remain young” for a shockingly long time.
It leads to the (perhaps erroneously) common belief that they are immortal.
They will, however, pass away from something brought on by aging and growing size.
Can lobster live up to 100 years?
Although lobsters live for an average of roughly 100 years, certain species live much longer than that, including turtles and jellyfish.
It is essential to extend our life expectancy.
Crabs are not genuinely everlasting; they age and die, although decapod crustaceans often live exceptionally long lives for creatures of their size.
In contrast, lobsters don’t seem to have age-related degenerative changes.
Older lobsters are typically bigger, stronger, and more fertile than younger ones.
Only when they are being hunted their continuing growth makes their larger prey more menacing.
Still, it makes it impossible for them to conceal themselves. Do they succumb to viral diseases when they cannot obtain adequate food?
Was the oldest lobster alive?
George is the oldest lobster and still alive (hatched in 1869). He was an American lobster.
He was apprehended in December 2008, and in January 2009, he was returned to the wild.
However, George weighed 20 pounds (9.1 kg) and is thought to be 140 years old.
In December 2008, George was seized off the coast of Newfoundland and sold the City Crab and Seafood restaurant in New York for $100.
A young diner who frequented the establishment gave George his name, and he was cared for like a pet.
George spent almost ten days inside the tank.
Moreover, a 120-year-old lobster was discovered in 2017 after spending 20 years in a seafood restaurant in New York.
Lobsters tend to get bigger and heavier as they get older.
Like many decapod crustaceans, lobsters develop throughout their lives and can add new muscle cells with each molt.
Lobsters can grow to remarkable sizes thanks to their long lifespan.
According to Guinness World Records, the giant lobster ever captured was in Nova Scotia, Canada, and it weighed 20.15 kilograms (44.4lb).
Do lobsters have green blood?
Lobsters do not have green blood; instead, they have colorless blood. It turns blue when it is exposed to oxygen.
Lobster blood is typically colorless, but when it is oxygenated, it turns bluish.
According to Prof. Sulistiono, hemocyanin, which contains copper, is present in lobster blood.
Its blood is crystal clear when a lobster is brought up from a fair depth and bled.
In the absence of oxygen, hemocyanin turns colorless; therefore, the oxygen level at those depths is relatively low.
Their blood is blue when lobsters are purchased from a live tank in a store or are taken out of a floating crate of lobsters.
And this is due to the high oxygen content of the ocean surface water and the live tank.
Additionally, when oxygen saturation occurs, the hemolymph protein hemocyanin, found in lobsters, turns blue.
Along with the oxygen, the copper ion is transported.
In its reduced state, the copper ion is blue; nevertheless, in its oxidized state, it is colorless.
Like some aquatic and ancient insects, Crustaceans and other arthropods contain the serum protein hemocyanin, which carries oxygen.
Vertebrate animals with blood based on iron include humans and Australians.
Unlike hemoglobin attached to RBCs in most vertebrates, hemocyanin is free to float in the hemolymph.
Only Malacostraca, the giant crustaceans, use it (including mollusks and arthropods).
Numerous crustaceans use hemoglobin, including copepods, barnacles, and brachiopods.
The nutritional value of lobsters is unaffected by their transparent blood.
Final Thought
If you burn them, cut off their head, and take out their heart, you can frequently kill immortal beings.
Lobsters are not among the animals that could be said to be immortal under the right conditions.
Other living things, including humans, also manufacture telomerase.
However, many cells that make up our bodies don’t have telomerase activity.
Telomerase is expressed in embryonic tissues, stem cells, and tumor cells, consistent with their ability to increase for a long time.
Since the American lobster still demonstrates a remarkable capacity for regeneration as its ages, it serves as an exemplar.
However, American lobsters use the telomerase enzyme to lengthen their bodies. I heard lobsters never get old and keep growing their entire lives.
Due to their unpredictable growth, they are enclosed in a thick shell that must be shed as they grow.
This molting process uses a lot of energy, and the bigger the shell, the more energy is required.
Giant lobsters frequently die from exhaustion during the molting process.