If the fire - engine red hue of thelobsteron your plate makes you painfully cognizant that it was boiled alive , recollect of it this fashion : The bright color is just the result of a chemical response .
The usual greenish - sorry shade that lobsters have in the ocean serve them well in living , camouflaging them from the predaceous eyes of seedcase , Melanogrammus aeglefinus , and other big Pisces that lurch the sea floor . Anita Kim , a scientist at the New England Aquarium , explicate to exist Sciencethat this color results from the combining of two molecules .
One is astaxanthin , a bright reddened carotenoid that lobsters absorb by eating thing that contain it . The other is crustacyanin , a protein that already subsist in lobsters . When crustacyanin truss with astaxanthin , it twists the molecule into a different shape , which change how it reflect light . So alternatively of crimson , live lobster are blue .
Then , when you seethe one of the tasty crustacean , the heat causes the crustacyanin molecule to distort into Modern shapes . In doing so , they release the astaxanthin molecule , which rebound to their original figure and red colour . Michele Cianci , a biochemist at Italy ’s Marche Polytechnic University where the phenomenon was enquire , likened it to manipulating a arctic band with your hands . “ you’re able to visit any sort of conformation you want , ” he told Live Science . “ When you release the gum elastic set , it go back to its own shape . ”
The same thinghappens with shrimp , which go from ghostly grey-headed to knock when you misrepresent them . How , then , do flamingo turn pink from eating raw , almost colorless half-pint ? Crustacyanin releases its hold on astaxanthin during the flamingo ’ digestion process just like it does when heated .
By the way of life , do n’t finger shamefaced about having torn your lobster away from its one lawful love — they do n’t reallymate for animation .
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A version of this story was originally published in 2019 and has been updated for 2025 .
