Good morning, everyone. Today I will talk about lobsters. Many of our listeners wrote to me to ask if lobsters really scream when they are boiled and why they turn red when they are cooked. These are very good questions. Well, let me ask you a question.
If you were sitting in a vat of boiling water, wouldn’t you scream and turn red, too? But in the lobster’s case, there is no scream, and there is a chemical reason for the change in colour.
Noises are produced as a lobster is boiled alive, but the sounds are not voices. As the lobster’s body heats up in the shell, pockets of air in the cavities and joints expand. If enough pressure builds inside the body, the air will make whistle-like sounds as it escapes through small openings in the shell.
As for the colour shift, a lobster’s shell contains red pigment molecules that combine with protein to create the camouflaging colours of the lobster. Live lobsters are usually blue-green or brown with flecks of yellow. When the lobster is boiled, the protein is denatured, or deformed, by the heat. The pigment remains, however, turning the shell red.