【Karen Foster Archives】

Lobsters are Karen Foster Archiveskind of a big deal to the people of Maine. Which is why they weren't at all pleased to discover the new lobster emoji was anatomically inaccurate.

Thankfully, Unicode took instant action and rectified its mistake.

SEE ALSO: Forget burgers, Ukrainians want an emoji for Borscht

In early February, the U.S. state—famed for its lobsters—celebrated its victory in securing a lobster emoji. In September 2017, Sen. Angus King of Maine penned a letter to the Unicode Consortium, urging it to release a lobster emoji.

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But, Mainers' victory was short-lived. When the official design was released, a few people pointed out that the lobster had the incorrect number of legs.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Seemingly, the lobster emoji—which featured three sets of legs—was missing a set of legs.

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"Lobsters have four sets plus the big claws," wrote LA Timesreporter Joel Rubin on Twitter.

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According to the University of Maine's Lobster Institute, American lobsters have four sets of "pereiopods," or "walking legs" in addition to its claws.

Emojipedia's Chief Emoji Officer Jeremy Burge—vice-chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee—told Mashablethe sample images created for each year's emoji release are designed to be "as close as possible" to what they think will "come on phones later in the year."

"For the lobster emoji, it wasn’t an intentional choice to reduce the number of legs, and given the realistic design it makes sense to be accurate," says Burge. "I might have let it slide given that the legs are so small at emoji sizes, but given the number of complaints from passionate lobster fans, the least we could do is put an extra pair of legs on."

"When we saw the tweets and headlines about the 'anatomically incorrect lobster' the first thing our designer Joshua Jones said to me was: 'can’t believe I messed up a leg count!'"

Unicode has updated its design and a four-legged lobster will be hitting phones later this year.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Thank goodness for that!

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