Not Your Everyday Pet

December 22, 2021 5:07 AM

Keeping A Grocery Store Lobster As A Pet Brady Brandwood bought a live lobster from the grocery store to see what would happen if it was kept as a pet in a saltwater tank. Watch as Leon gets accustomed to a new home and new lease on life.

If you'd like to see how Leon is doing, there's an update. And don't forget to check back when Leon gets a new, larger tank!

posted by tommasz (27 comments total)

I clicked on the first video and when I saw it was 15 minutes long, I figured I'd watch for a minute and then maybe skip to the end. But I loved it! There was something about the minimal voice over / music and gentle unfolding that felt both soothing and intriguing, and I just watched both videos (even though I have quite a bit of work to do this morning). I was happy to hear Brady's 'Q&A' session in the second video and I'm so glad that Leon is getting a new tank with some hiding places - may he have a long and happy life.

The world feels so crazy lately. It was lovely to lose myself in this for a little while. Thank you for posting, tommasz.
posted by widdershins at 5:51 AM on December 22, 2021 [23 favorites]

This is the best and one of the odder recommendations I have ever gotten from The Tube Of You, and I am almost half as happy to see it on The Blue as I am that Leon's claws recovered. Put me off lobster as food too.
posted by labberdasher at 6:07 AM on December 22, 2021 [9 favorites]

What a magnificent animal. I want him to team up with SerpaDesign or one of those other YouTube guys who make insane huge aquarium/terrarium setups and get Leon the tank of his dreams. That lobster is probably going to live for decades at least, if not outlive his rescuer given the right conditions; he might as well set him up well.
posted by fight or flight at 6:08 AM on December 22, 2021 [8 favorites]

So we will someday add "lobster sole beneficiary of eccentric owner's will" to all those stories about beloved dogs inheriting millions?
posted by wenestvedt at 6:10 AM on December 22, 2021 [13 favorites]

This was interesting but I'm curious how he knows how much to feed it. When he buys the frozen seafood and says it should last many weeks I was thinking it was a day or two worth of food.
posted by dobbs at 6:16 AM on December 22, 2021

"...unless the zombie apocalypse hits. Then I'll re-evaluate the situation."
posted by martin q blank at 6:23 AM on December 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

So we will someday add "lobster sole beneficiary of eccentric owner's will" to all those stories about beloved dogs inheriting millions?

Nah. Having read that article on lobster lifespan, eccentric owners' unhappy children will make sure to add concealed heating elements under their parents' lobster's tanks to raise their metabolisms and shorten their lifespan.
posted by trig at 6:28 AM on December 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

Plans to create and worship our leviathan lobster god.
Public group · 124.3K members

Lobsters do not stop growing and do not die of old age. They die when they become too large to properly molt.

We are going to take a lobster, help it molt it’s shell over several generations, and create a leviathan god. Here we will plan our gods birth and rise to divinity.

posted by BungaDunga at 6:32 AM on December 22, 2021 [21 favorites]

"...unless the zombie apocalypse hits. Then I'll re-evaluate the situation."


Right? I mean how fickle is this guy!?

Also, what happened to that nice crab and those jellies? He never says, but I have a bad feeling...
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 6:36 AM on December 22, 2021 [3 favorites]

Piiiiiinchyyyyyy! I made you some risotto!!
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 6:58 AM on December 22, 2021 [15 favorites]

The grocery store a couple of blocks away from us had live lobsters for sale, and my son always wanted to visit them - it was the high point of the shopping trip. When the store closed, he may have been more sad about the lobsters going away than we were about having to walk 8 blocks farther for groceries - and he was at least 8 years old at that point. We always wondered whether anyone ever bought them as pets. Now that I see just how much space (and years!) it would take, I guess it's not so likely.

When he said "maybe it is a female" because it started shifting the rocks to "clean up its house," was that an actual biological/nesting thing, or just a dumb sexist joke? Hoping for the former.
posted by Mchelly at 6:58 AM on December 22, 2021 [4 favorites]

Vaguely related - Nerval: A Man and His Lobster "what," [said Nerval] "could be quite so ridiculous as making a dog, a cat, a gazelle, a lion or any other beast follow one about. I have affection for lobsters. They are tranquil, serious and they know the secrets of the sea."
posted by misteraitch at 7:07 AM on December 22, 2021 [5 favorites]

I run a small academy for lobster like this one. We stress tough love, daily chores and the like.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:13 AM on December 22, 2021 [3 favorites]

I watched this a few days ago, and the comments are well worth scrolling all the way through. Some amazing info and stories, including two terrapins rescued from a restaurant in the early 1970's and still going strong <3
posted by mani at 8:24 AM on December 22, 2021 [6 favorites]

Piiiiiinchyyyyyy! I made you some risotto!!

I know how this ends.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:57 AM on December 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

After seeing both this - and the new law in the U.K. - I personally will never be buying a store lobster again - they obviously have those bands on for too long and the poor things are starving in the tank. (And - I love me some tasty Lobster, Crab, basically anything...)
posted by rozcakj at 9:13 AM on December 22, 2021 [4 favorites]

Yeah that Facebook group is a really interesting issue, because this lobster will one day molt and grow to be heavier than a small Turkey and unless you plan on doing what Julia Child did with lobsters of that size, it may eventually need to be transferred to a zoo or aquarium.
posted by polymodus at 9:46 AM on December 22, 2021

Unfortunately exoskeletons don't scale well. Long before the lobster becomes Leviathanesque, it will be more or less immobilized by the weight of its shell. Sorry, sea bugs; endoskeletons rule, exoskeletons drool (above a certain size)
posted by phooky at 9:57 AM on December 22, 2021 [5 favorites]

Lobsters may never reach blue whale size, but anomalocaridids got over two meters, and sea scorpions over two and a half. That's a pretty fair size.
posted by away for regrooving at 10:58 AM on December 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

Just some delightfully mellow videos. Not sure what makes a pet video aggravating and what makes it good, but this man and his lobster have cracked it.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:23 AM on December 22, 2021 [5 favorites]

Unfortunately exoskeletons don't scale well

No, I didn't say the Facebook people were literally right, I was saying that that reminds me of Julia Child's episode where the lobster she handled whole and showed home cooks how to break down was huge. Literally the weight of a small turkey. Or large chicken. And it wouldn't be easy to care for in a home aquarium.
posted by polymodus at 12:55 PM on December 22, 2021

I've added this to my list of videos I watch to encourage me to stick with veganism.

Even lobsters can feel both pain and relief, be crippled and be rehabilitated. Lobsters.
posted by AlSweigart at 2:25 PM on December 22, 2021 [8 favorites]

I haven't watched the second video yet, but I hope Leon gets some hidey-holes, since that tank looks pretty exposed. I have not had a pet lobster, but I have had a mini-lobster, a crayfish, and they love hidely-holes. My neighbors were transplants from Louisiana, and one day, they had a full-on crawdad boil, with fresh crayfish flown in from New Orleans. The next day, as they were cleaning up, they discovered that one crayfish had survived the massacre, hidden in some ice in the cooler. They decided that the only way to deal with the situation was to give it to the little kid next door, my own mini_confusion, who was then 3 years old. We named the survivor Dr. Zoidberg, of course, and he lived out the rest of his days in my living room. He molted once -- that was weird.
posted by pleasant_confusion at 4:32 PM on December 22, 2021 [9 favorites]

noted the above "sea scorpions" link has a swell human-to-giant-lobster scale graphic
posted by ovvl at 4:43 PM on December 22, 2021 [2 favorites]

I did enjoy this.
posted by Oyéah at 6:05 PM on December 22, 2021

What a magnificent animal. I want him to team up with SerpaDesign or one of those other YouTube guys who make insane huge aquarium/terrarium setups and get Leon the tank of his dreams.

whelp there goes my morning
posted by A Terrible Llama at 5:40 AM on December 23, 2021

Latest update: Leon gets a new home, some companions and a sponsor.
posted by neroli at 9:25 AM on January 14, 2022 [3 favorites]