Can Lobsters Regrow Their Eyes? The Truth About Regeneration

If you've heard that lobsters can regrow their eyes after losing them, we hate to break it to you—but that's a myth. While lobsters do have impressive regenerative abilities, their eyes are off-limits when it comes to growing back body parts.

Here's what's actually true: lobsters can regenerate claws, legs, and antennae through a process tied to molting. But their eyes? Those are too complex to regenerate once damaged or lost.

What Lobsters Can Actually Regrow

Lobsters have remarkable powers of regeneration for certain body parts. If a lobster loses a claw in a fight or to escape a predator, it will grow a new one—albeit smaller at first. The regeneration happens over successive molts, and it typically takes 3-4 molt cycles for a claw to return to its regular size.

What can regenerate:

• Claws (chelae)
• Walking legs
• Antennae (feelers)
• Small portions of the tail region

The catch? The lobster must lose the entire appendage for regeneration to kick in. If a claw is only partially damaged, the body doesn't always recognize the injury, which is why lobsters sometimes perform self-amputation (called autotomy) to trigger the regrowth process.

Why Eyes Don't Make the Cut

Lobster eyes are compound structures made up of thousands of individual lenses arranged in precise geometric patterns. This complexity is what makes them impossible to regenerate. According to marine biologists, the intricate architecture of the eye—complete with photoreceptors, neurons, and specialized optical structures—is simply too sophisticated for the lobster's regenerative mechanisms to rebuild.

Interestingly, when a lobster loses an eye, other appendages can sometimes grow in its place. Instead of a new eye, you might see an antenna-like structure sprouting from the eye socket—a bizarre quirk of crustacean biology.

The Molting Connection

All crustacean regeneration depends on molting, the process where lobsters shed their hard exoskeleton to grow. During this vulnerable period, new limbs begin to form. Right after a limb is lost, the wound heals with scar tissue. Within 48 hours, a transparent hemispherical protrusion appears—the beginning of a blastema, a mass of cells that will eventually develop into the new limb.

The regenerated limb starts out about 30% smaller than the original but is structurally and functionally identical, with the same muscle fibers and nerve connections. Over multiple molts, it catches up in size.

A Strange Side Effect of Eye Loss

Here's a weird twist: the eyestalk of a lobster contains a growth-inhibiting hormone. When a lobster loses an eye (and therefore the eyestalk), it loses this hormonal brake system. The result? Blinded lobsters actually grow twice as fast as their sighted counterparts, though this comes at the obvious cost of losing vision.

So while lobsters can't regrow their eyes, losing one does give them an unexpected growth spurt—nature's consolation prize, perhaps.