In China, you’d be forgiven for thinking of polluted rivers and toxic landscapes when hearing stories about the discovery of strangely discolored living beings. But that’s not always the case as the story below proves.

One night in August, a man named Yang Jinbao from Datong Township in Tianchang City, Anhui, went to fishing for shrimp and lobsters in a couple of drains near his house (doesn’t sound very appetizing). It wasn’t long before his net scooped up a big catch of sea produce. The next morning when he went to inspect his catch, he was shocked to discover a bright, blue lobster in the net. The lobster was slightly smaller than the average lobsters but otherwise had the same physique as all others (except for the color of course).

He then posted a picture of the lobster online, attracting a lot of comments from netizens. Many were quick to speculate that the lobster’s color was due to heavy pollution – a logic theory given the frightening abundance of water pollution here.

However, it was Ding Fengqing, a staff member of the Fisheries Research Institute of the Anhui Academy of Agricultural Science who finally shed some light on the matter: The lobster’s bizarre color is due to genetic mutation that occurred as the lobster was growing and this phenomenon has a one in 2 million chance of occurring. Ding also shared some other interesting facts: the average lobster changes its shell around 10 times during its lifespan and it’s therefore highly likely that the lobster had a normal looking shell before this one.

Maybe lobsters have finally begun to get fashion conscious.

Source: sina.com.cn

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Keywords: blue lobster Anhui