Still Life with Lobster. Lobsters are a family of large marine crustaceans.
Lobsters have long bodies with muscular tails, and live in crevices or burrows on the sea floor. Three of their five pairs of legs have claws, including the first pair, which are usually much larger than the others.
Highly prized as seafood, lobsters are economically important, and are often one of the most profitable commodities in coastal areas they populate. Commercially important species include two species of Homarus from the northern Atlantic Ocean, and scampi-the Northern Hemisphere genus Nephrops and the Southern Hemisphere genus Metanephrops.
Although several other groups of crustaceans have the word lobster in their names, the unqualified term lobster generally refers to the clawed lobsters of the family Nephropidae. Clawed lobsters are not closely related to spiny lobsters or slipper lobsters, which have no claws, or to squat lobsters.
The closest living relatives of clawed lobsters are the reef lobsters and the three families of freshwater crayfish. Lobsters are invertebrates with a hard protective exoskeleton. Like most arthropods, lobsters must moult to grow, which leaves them vulnerable. During the moulting process, several species change color. Lobsters have eight walking legs; the front three pairs bear claws, the first of which are larger than the others. The front pincers are also biologically considered legs