Free The Secret Life of Lobsters by Trevor Corson

would occur in full view of the scientists.
    To test his theory of lobster mating, Jelle had created as natural an environment as he could inside the lab. In his mind’s eye he had envisioned females occupying the shelters, molting and releasing their sex pheromones, and males fighting each other for the privilege of joining a female inside. Catching them in the act would be the hard part. In the wild, lobsters are generally nocturnal, emerging from their shelters after sundown. Yet molting usually occurs during the day, when the lobsters are safely in hiding. If Jelle was to observe social interaction and mating—the latter ought to coincide with molting—he and his team would have to be on call constantly. Jelle and his four assistants drew up a rotating schedule for the late spring, summer, and early fall. Someone was usually in the lab during the day anyway. But every night, seven days a week for six months, one of them would have to stake out the dark lab.
    Jelle selected sixteen specimens—four males and four females for each tank. The researchers slipped identification bands onto the lobsters’ claws, behind the pincer so the claw remained free to move, before dropping the animals into the water. For realism they added rock crabs, hermit crabs, minnows, and mussels, some of which would serve as food. To help the lobsters adjust to their new environment, Jelle established a routine of switching off the lab lights when the sun went down, and turning on a set of red darkroom bulbs. The lobsters grew comfortable in the tank, and in the red gloom they investigated each other.
    The encounters weren’t pleasant. In each tank one male quickly established a reputation as a despot. This dominant male bullied the other lobsters until they retreated to a distant corner. In both tanks the dominant lobster claimed the larger of the two molded shelters, leaving the weaker males and females to fend for themselves in the smaller shelters and exposed cinder blocks.
    Nothing changed for several weeks. Every night after the lights went off, the alpha male made his rounds, bullying each lobster before moving on to the next. When all the lobsters, male and female, had been dealt their daily humiliation, thedominant male gathered food and returned to the larger shelter.
    In a way Jelle could almost sympathize with the beta lobsters in his tanks. A few years earlier, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution had refocused its gaze from coastal research to deep-sea oceanography. Research priorities had been reshuffled, and the sex lives of lobsters had come up short. In 1974 Jelle had taken a new job across the street, as an associate professor in Boston University’s Marine Program. The BU program was housed inside a respected research center in Woods Hole called the Marine Biological Laboratory. Jelle’s new lab was a concrete basement with no windows and only one entrance, but it was spacious and had a steady supply of seawater.
    After a few weeks Jelle noticed a subtle change in the social structure in the tanks. The female lobsters had taken up residence in the cinder blocks closest to the dominant lobster’s concrete shelter. This was about the time, Jelle calculated, that the females would be preparing to molt. A few days after Jelle made this calculation something else happened. One of the females began to call at the despot’s door.
    After the dominant male had made his rounds, one of the females he’d abused followed him home and stood by the entrance to his shelter. Visibly agitated, the male turned to face her but stayed inside, flicking his antennules. The female poked her claws through the entrance and flicked back. The male stood on tiptoe and vigorously fanned the swimmerets underneath his tail. The female jabbed the tips of her claws into the gravel, right-left, right-left, and shoved a few pebbles around on his doorstep with her front legs. Then she punched her claws in the