6 rare orange lobsters found in Mass.

NORTH ATTLEBORO, Mass. (WPRI) - Lobster, before boiling, bears a distinctive dull brown mottled color. Unless it's one of those fancy, rare blue lobsters. But now there's something even more funky: an honest-to-goodness live lobster that looks for all the world as bright orange as if it was already boiled for a meal.

A worker at Fresh Catch of Mansfield was unpacking a shipment of live lobsters from Maine when he found not one, but five orange lobsters.

And that's not all. Another carrot-colored crustacean was discovered at a Fresh Catch store in Attleboro - for a total of six.

• Photos: Rare orange lobsters found in Mass.

According to the University of Maine's Lobster Institute , the color is attributed to a genetic deformity. There are plenty other colors out there in the sea. And while rare, blue, orange and red aren't as rare as some of the even more unusual colors.

• Blue: 1 in 2 million
• Red or orange (before cooking): 1 in 10 million
• Yellow: 1 in 30 million
• Calico (mottled orange and black): 1 in 30 million
• Split-color, half-orange half-brown: 1 in 50 million
• Albino, or colorless lobster: 1 in 100 million

The theory at Fresh Catch is that they all came from the same island or section of coast -- but there's no telling what prompted the change, whether it was their genes or something in the water.