Lobsters!

A special guest visited our school today--Bob Bayer from the Lobster Institute and the University of Maine!  He came to our school to teach us about lobster anatomy and behavior and to dissect a lobster.

Here is Mr. Bayer  with the female lobster.  

Here's the male lobster. 

Here's the female lobster.  She is going to sleep in fresh water.  

What color is lobster blood?  Clear?  White?  Blue?  

It's clear!  Mr. Bayer  used a syringe to draw blood from a vein in the lobster's tail.  

Wanna feel the blood?  It's kind of watery feeling.  But when it clots it turns into this slimy, stretchy stuff.    It was all over the table before we were done with the dissection. 

Now Mr. Bayer began the dissection.  He cut away part of the female's shell to reveal the heart.  It was still beating, so we could watch the motion the heart made while beating.  It continued to beat for about 10 minutes.  

Now it's time to see the gills.  

There they are!  Under the microscope they looked kind of feathery.  

In this picture you can see the ovaries and the stomach.  The ovaries are the dark green tubes and the stomach is the white blob by the scissors.  

Inside the stomach there are teeth!  The lobster's mouth connects directly to the stomach.

Here is a better view of those green ovaries.  Inside the ovaries are thousands of undeveloped eggs.  

Here is what the ovaries look like under the microscope.  You can see the thousands of individual eggs inside the membrane of the ovary.  

Now it's time to take a look at the intestine.  

Here's the intestine.  It runs right down the top of the tail.  

After dissecting the lobsters, we decided to cook them up and have a feast.  We just couldn't let that good food go to waste!

They like it!  They like it!

But it is kind of stinky!

Thank you so much for coming to our school and dissecting lobsters with us, Mr. Bayer!