What’s half-blue, half-male, half-female and tastes nice with clarified butter? That will be TikTok’s latest crustacean sensation.
Jacob Knowles, a Maine lobster fisherman who has 2.6 million followers on TikTok, confirmed off the bewildering critter in a video he posted final Tuesday, which has been seen greater than 6.3 million occasions by Monday afternoon.
“That is the good lobster I’ve ever seen,” a visibly excited Knowles mentioned within the clip whereas displaying the multicolored, hermaphroditic lobster.
“Not solely it’s cut up 50-50 proper down its again blue and regular, however in the event you look beneath, it’s really half-male, half-female,” Knowles defined whereas manipulating the aquatic animal to disclose its twin reproductive organs.
The lobsterman added that the lobster’s blue aspect was male and its brown – or “regular”-colored — aspect was feminine.
Knowles mentioned {that a} good friend of his had caught the uncommon creature and given it to him to point out it on TikTok.
“[It’s] a really distinctive lobster. By no means seen one prefer it, by no means heard of 1 prefer it,” Knowles gushed, including that it was possible “one of many rarest lobsters within the Gulf of Maine.”
The possibilities of discovering a two-tone lobster are 1 in 50 million, based on the College of Maine’s Lobster Institute.
Knowles requested his followers to determine whether or not he ought to let the lobster go, or hold it in a spacious underwater cage as “a pet” by way of the winter months to see if it may reproduce with itself.
In a follow-up video, which raked in 4.5 million views, Knowles mentioned that his followers unanimously determined that he ought to maintain onto the crustacean and see if it may lay eggs.
A naming competitors adopted, and TikTok customers overwhelmingly voted to christen the 1-in-50 million lobster “Bowie,” after the late music icon David Bowie, whose eyes had been famously two completely different colours, and who created the androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust.
Knowles’ subsequent movies documented his constructing a big steel enclosure, much like an outsized lobster entice, for his new pet, and checking up on it.
The fisherman warned that “there may be slight risk” that Bowie wouldn’t make it, however he promised that the distinctive lobster can be safer from predators contained in the cage.
Knowles additionally known as on aquariums or science facilities that could be considering adopting Bowie to contact him.
