I notice that their pincers are always rubber-banded, obviously for their handlers’ safety. But what’s the worst they could do? Amputate a finger? Affect bruising and possible broken skin? Aggravate me ever so slightly?
Their pincers are banded to keep them from fighting with each other.
:smack: Hadn’t even thought of that.
This is a WAG but I would think they could break your finger. And by “break” I mean a full-on snap clean through.
Those claws are all muscle. Far stronger than a human hand (consider the width of your finger to a lobster claw).
I have gotten pincered by crayfish before and it hurts. In that case no worse than a serious pinch but they are tiny compared to an adult lobster.
I don’t think it’s quite that strong, but a big lobster can probably do a decent amount of damage if it wanted to.
According to this abstract, the maximum force they recorded for a crusher claw from a lobster with a 172 mm carapace was 256 Newtons, or 57.6 pounds.
By comparison, here’s a list for human bite force, from this article (PDF):
So a lobster pinch would be similar to a low end bite from a human. Probably enough to break the skin, but I doubt you’d get broken bones since it’s a crushing force instead of a shearing force.
All bets are off if you’re flying somewhere and one gets sucked into your jet engine.
I cooked seafood at one low part of my life. Lobsters came 25 to a case. There would usually be one claw that would become unbanded/unpinned out of each case. It hurt to be pinched, although burns hurt worse. They would break skin/bruise but no where near amputation.
A rock lobster could hurt if someone threw one at you.
You could be severely lacerated by the tail.
So would a stone crab. 
The real danger is infection. Lobsters carry all sorts of bacteria. This is actually worse from tail lacerations than from a claw crush.
Claw crushes IME hurt worse though. I got a good one from a five-pounder once. Although the big ones are stronger, they also have a broader duller claw surface, so it’s not as immediately painful as when the little ones get you. But the crush from the big one hurt for days and bruised up nasty.
Especially if you were at the Love Shack, the Love Shack, baby!
I think of that song every time I cross the Nooksack River – which is several times a week.
You don’t wanna piss them off, or they’ll encase your feet in concrete and toss you into the Hudson.
Me too, and I agree. Could definitely break the skin but I’m dubious about whether it’s strong enough to break your finger. It’s a squeezing pressure, not a sudden slamming force, and when one clamps down on you, it’s not so strong that you can’t pull your finger out. The real problem is that the claws have these jagged little “teeth”, so it doesn’t take an incredible amount of pressure to break the skin.
When you are handling one at a time, as most cooks do, the risk of getting pinched is pretty minimal. The claws can’t reach you if you grab it by the body. The risk comes when you’re handling them in bunches, as **kayaker **described.
I worked in a seafood kitchen when I was in high school, and that cured me of any interest in eating seafood until I was in my 40s.
There are a number of reasons for banding them (customer safety, inexperienced Walmart Associate handler safety, etc.), but the Maine (pun intended) reason for banding them is to keep them from EATING each other, which they will do the first time you turn your back on them. They typically aren’t fed anything while in their holding tanks.
EarlyMan (from the great state of Maine)
A lobster can kill you if you don’t cook it right.
One thing nobody has mentioned is the fact that lobsters have two different types of claws. One is a crusher, the other is a seizer. One has slow twich muscle fiber, the other, fast-twitch. I’d imagine it would depend on which one got you.
I’ve only been grabbed by a blue crab, but it took me a rather long time to get him to let go. I bled a fair amount.
Not a good comparison, given that they use two fundamentally different designs; exoskeletal versus endoskeletal. Especially since one of the advantages of an endoskeleton like ours is that it scales up better; large exoskeletal creatures need to devote more volume to skeleton (as opposed to muscle) than an endoskeletal creature of the same size.
Concentrated along the comparatively narrow edge of the lobster’s pincer, I’d say that’s enough force to sever a finger, if it catches you at a joint, rather than the middle of a bone.