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What is the difference between crayfish and lobster

What is the difference between crayfish and lobster

4hw.com.cn: summer is coming, and it's time to eat crayfish and drink beer. Crayfish is the favorite food of many friends. Many friends don't know the difference between crayfish and lobster. Let's have a look.

The difference between lobster and crayfish

Crayfish is the most common food in our life. The most obvious difference between lobster and crayfish is size. Crayfish is freshwater lobster.

In the golden season of May and June every year, the streets of Shanghai, Nanjing, Hefei, Wuhan and other cities are filled with the smell of crayfish. A few years ago, a famous food street such as "Zhen Street" was born in Beijing.

We usually eat crayfish. In fact, it can not be regarded as a real lobster. Its scientific name is Procambarus clarkii. It belongs to Arthropoda, Decapoda and cambaridae.

This kind of freshwater shrimp is commonly known as Lagu in the north and lobster, crayfish and freshwater lobster in the south. Crayfish is native to the south central United States and northeast Mexico. It was introduced into China through Japan in the 1920s and 1930s. Astaxanthin, chitin and other substances extracted from crayfish shell can be widely used in food, medicine, papermaking and other fields. Coupled with its delicious meat and rich nutrition, crayfish quickly 'Red' all over the north and south of the river.

Food goods may be aware of the edible value of crayfish, but this guy's scientific research value is also very high. In foreign countries, crayfish has become a typical experimental animal to study fighting and social behavior. This guy is a real natural violent maniac. As long as the other party exceeds the safe distance and appears in the line of sight, he will raise his pincers and pose as an attack. They fight to establish their social class status. Crayfish with high social class will occupy more resources, such as spouse, food, shelter and so on. Once the social level is established, the crayfish with high level will pose as a winner and constantly approach and attack their opponents, while the crayfish with low status will pose as a loser and can only yield and retreat. However, their social hierarchy sequence is not invariable. When there are invaders, a pair of crayfish with established social hierarchy may change the dominant relationship.

Crayfish has strong adaptability. It can survive in lakes, rivers, ponds, ditches and paddy fields, and even in some water bodies where fish are difficult to survive; It is resistant to low oxygen and can survive in some low pollution environments. Eat almost everything, from all kinds of fresh and tender aquatic plants and fragments of higher plants to benthos, zooplankton and even the bodies of all kinds of fish and shrimp in the water. At the beginning of molting, crayfish will become soft and their activity will decline. Hungry shrimp will take the opportunity to attack and eat 'soft shell shrimp'.

Crayfish also has the ability to hide, like and good at digging holes. Under natural conditions, caves provide necessary protection against extreme environmental conditions, and are also important resources for crayfish to compete with each other. Artificial breeding usually places some artificial caves to reduce the fighting between crayfish and reduce its mortality.

Violent crayfish also have juvenile feeding behavior. After hatching, the mother shrimp will protect its children to complete the growth and development of the larval stage. However, when the young shrimp can move freely away from the mother at a certain stage of development, if the mother shrimp and the young shrimp are not separated in time, the mother shrimp will even eat their own children.

Where's the real lobster?

The lobster, as it is often said, is the general name of 19 species of shrimp belonging to 4 genera of the crustacean Decapoda lobster family (palinuridae) of the arthropod family. This kind of 'lobster' does not have large pliers like Procambarus clarkii. However, compared with the crayfish we eat more often, this kind of marine lobster also has some common characteristics: they all belong to Decapoda with 5 pairs of walking feet and 5 pairs of swimming feet; The blood is blue without red blood cells; The shell contains a lot of astaxanthin and turns red when cooked.

People who love seafood must know 'Aolong', that is, Australian lobster. However, due to the confusion of English translated names and different common names in different places, it is impossible to verify which shrimp this common name refers to. However, the often eaten 'Aolong' can be simply distinguished from seawater and freshwater shrimp. A kind of seafood called red rock lobster or Southern rock lobster (Jasus edwardsii) in English. It is also a member of the real lobster family. Its head and chest are cylindrical, strong and colorful. Before ripening, it has mixed red, hard armour, many spines, two pairs of antennae are developed, the meat is delicious, weighs several kilograms, and the price is enough to deter ordinary people. According to media reports, Australian amateur diver NDIR once found a huge lobster in the waters of New South Wales, weighing 106 kg on a scale.

Fresh water 'Aolong' usually refers to the Red Crayfish (Cherax quadricarinatus) native to Australia. It belongs to Decapoda, crayfish family and light shell shrimp, and is not a member of the real lobster family. The body color of this kind of shrimp will change with the change of habitat environment. It is generally blue-green or brownish green, and its shape is similar to that of lobster in seawater.

It should be noted that, like many other animals, in the artificial breeding of these shrimp, people will cultivate some new varieties in order to pursue better taste or yield. Therefore, due to the problems of introducing species and breeding new varieties, whether crayfish or lobster, it is really difficult to accurately identify the real identity of the goods you eat on the table.