If you’ve never visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York, here’s what the lobster exhibit looks like—I was at the museum for a book signing last weekend and snapped this photo. Alongside the beautifully presented lobster shells, you can see a couple of gross-looking large lobsters squeezed into bottles of formaldehyde.

This is just a small sampling of the world’s lobsters. If you’ve read The Secret Life of Lobsters you may remember this passage:

“The oceans of the earth abound with lobsters. Lobsters with claws like hair combs sift mud in deep offshore trenches. Clawless lobsters with antennae like spikes migrate in clans in the Caribbean and the South Pacific. Flattened lobsters with heads like shovels scurry and burrow in the Mediterranean and the Galapagos. The eccentric diversity of the world’s lobsters has earned them some of the most whimsical names in the animal kingdom. There is a Hunchback Locust lobster and a Regal Slipper lobster. There are Marbled Mitten lobsters, Velvet Fan lobsters, and even a Musical Furry lobster. The Unicorn and Buffalo Blunthorn lobsters inspire admiration; the African Spear lobster, the Arabian Whip lobster, and the Rough Spanish lobster demand respect. Nowhere in the world, however, is the seafloor as densely populated with lobsters as in the Gulf of Maine.”

Tellingly, the lobsters in the American Museum of Natural History are positioned between the beetles and the spiders. Yes, they are basically underwater insects.