Rare orange lobster ‘Biscuit’ rescued from Red Lobster dinner plate headed to aquarium

Orange lobsters are rare, that much we know..

Most say 1 in 30 million, others contend it’s 1 in 10 million.

But the rescue just weeks apart of two of the fluorescent crustaceans — affectionately named “Cheddar” and “Biscuit” for Red Lobster’s Cheddar Bay Biscuits — is prompting scientists to study just how rare these creatures really are.

A team from Ripley’s Aquarium picked up Biscuit from a Red Lobster restaurant in Meridian, Mississippi, weeks after another team rescued Cheddar from a franchise in Hollywood, Florida, according to an Aug. 8 post on the Ripley’s Aquarium Instagram page.

Cheddar, who was rescued in early July, is now on display at Ripley’s Aquarium in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina,

Biscuit now resides at Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and will go on display later this year.

A Ripley’s Aquarium in Canada also saved an orange lobster, named “Pinchy,” from a grocery store, meaning all three Ripley’s locations have rescued one of the creatures within the last year, according to a blog post on Ripley’s website. Ripley’s owns aquariums as well as “Believe it or Not!” museums that display unusual artifacts and “animal oddities.”

“Orange lobsters are uncommon but perhaps not as rare as we first thought,” Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies Director of Husbandry, Jared Durrett, said in a statement on the Ripley’s website.

Both Biscuit and Cheddar were harvested from the same area, which support scientists’ theory that their strange color comes from pigments in their diet.

“... Perhaps their localized diet contains a pigment that, when paired with the lobster’s genetics, creates the orange coloration we are seeing,” Durrett said in a statement.

The lobsters are so rare because their bright color makes them attractive to predators, according to a news release from Red Lobster. Most lobsters are rusty brown in color and turn red when cooked because heat changes the pigment molecules in their shells.

They can also be blue — and yes, those are also rare.

Ripley’s Aquarium researchers will team up with Red Lobster to study the “anomaly” of the orange crustaceans.

Red Lobster did not immediately return a request for comment on Biscuit’s rescue from McClatchy News.

Red Lobster spokeswoman Nicole Bott told Ripley’s Aquarium that its fishermen that are seeing many orange lobsters during the summer months within a certain fishing region.

“This seems to indicate the coloring is coming from a different food source,” the statement says. “We’re excited to support Ripley’s research into this and learn more about our changing lobster populations.”

This story was originally published August 8, 2022 at 6:58 PM with the headline "Rare orange lobster ‘Biscuit’ rescued from Red Lobster dinner plate headed to aquarium."