Crawdads are a close relative of the lobster. In fact, crawdad are more closely related to the Maine lobster than other types of lobster in the oceans. They are so close in taste that there was a recent incident in which a New York restaurant was using crawdads in place of lobster in their lobster salad – and no one noticed. There are more than 500 species of crawdad found throughout the world, and more than 350 of those live in the United States. Of these, only two species are actually harvested and eaten. Crawdad live on every continent in the world except for Antarctica.