Rare Orange Lobster Mama in Maine Is Hatching Rare Orange Babies

Peaches the lobster was donated to the University of New England's Marine Science Center located in Biddeford, Maine last year due to her rare orange color. Peaches and Norma, a normal-colored lobster, are mothers to two families of 140 tiny baby lobsters.

The coolest aspect of this story? Over a dozen of the lobster offspring share the same rare orange color as one of their mamas!

CBS News shared a super charming video of these babies where one of the student researchers said, "It's so exciting. Every day I come in here, and I'm, like, on the verge of tears," said Ruby Motulsky, a student who is doing summer research on the baby lobsters. "I'm discovering new information that no one else has ever seen or heard of."

The students hope to study the lobsters in hopes of learning which specific genes result in the sometimes rare colorations of lobsters.

Related: Mystic Aquarium Introduces Their Rare Blue American Lobster

WMTW reports that Markus Frederich, a professor of marine sciences at the University of New England, said, "Those orange lobsters are pretty rare in itself and, supposedly, (the odds are) about one in 30 million of finding an orange lobster. But rarely do we find any egg-bearing females." He continued, "“Now we have them while they develop from those different larval stages. They start tiny and molt multiple times into various different shapes and sizes," Frederich said. "That gives us so many more options to study what makes them orange and why and how they're different from the regular-colored lobster."

Another orange lobster that is being housed at the university is bearing eggs that are expected to hatch in the spring. Her name is Pineapple.

Lobsters And Their Rare Colors

Lobsters are usually sort of a muddy brown in nature, but bright red when they are cooked. But there are also some pretty unusual colors of lobsters in the wild.

The chances of finding a blue lobster are approximately  one in two million, and fishermen usually find blue lobsters every year or two. The rarest.org explains The bright blue coloring is caused by a genetic mutation that produces an overabundance of astaxanthin-wrapping proteins. These proteins turn all the red astaxanthin into blue crustacyanin.

There are also something called calico lobsters. Calico lobsters, which have a mottled black and orange shell, are some of the most unique lobsters out there. According to the University of Maine’s Lobster Institute, finding a calico lobster is a 1 in 30 million chance.

There are also cotton candy lobsters!

The chances of finding one of these beauties is 1 in 100 million!