A lobster is an invertebrate that has an exoskeleton. This means that they have to molt in order to grow. Molting is where the lobster sheds its external shell. The reason you don't see theses shells is because a lobster will usually eat the shell to get extra calcium to help harden the new soft shell that has developed. They will usually do this 4-7 times a year by the time they have molted 20-25 times before they are ready to be caught and shipped to a market are restaurant. When caught in distress a lobster can amputate its limbs so it can make a quicker get away. Later the limbs will regenerate similar to the way a starfish's limbs regenerate. They can live for over seventy years. A lobster's nervous system has been linked to being similar to that of a grasshopper. A lobster's blood is a clear liquid that turns to a milky liquid when cooked and is safe to eat by its self. A lobster starts out as one small egg of thousands located on the mothers tail. It stays in this egg for ten to twelve months and all this time it molts and grows in the egg. Then it is larva that floats around as plankton. Once it gains enough mass to sink to the bottom of the ocean it hides in the rocks until it is big enough to not have to fear as many predators. Then they are ether caught and sold or they live on to mate. After a certain age they are no long legal to catch so they are left to reproduce and grow. One cool thing about a lobster is they continue to grow until they die. One lobster was estimated to be over one-hundred years old and weight forty-two pounds. Cooked lobster has been considered a delicacy since the time of the Greeks and Romans. At one point they were even used as a form of money for trade. This is if they were still good who would use a rotting lobster as money.