Albeit, like displacer beasts and piercers, one whose name is just a rather bland description of what it does.
1E
Whether or not the original toy looked like a lobster (and I've not seen it to judge), the creature depicted in 1E has no real resemblance to such a thing. Indeed, unlike all later versions, it appears to be a vertebrate. It has a globular body encased in a shell of what appear to be irregular bony scutes, no visible neck, and what appears to be a beak for a mouth. The indications of its vertebrate nature are partly its eyes, which seem to have pupils, rather than being compound, but mainly its limbs. These are splayed out like those of a lizard or crocodile, and seem to have a standard vertebrate structure, with three long toes on each foot. The tail has some sort of ribbing along it - possibly annular scales - and, of course, ends in the proverbial propeller of the original toy. The "antennae", in this version, appear to be tentacles.
The creature is remarkably tough, especially given that it's only about the size of an average human - it has more hit points than, say, a horse or a tiger. The bony plates are as tough as steel, and despite this, it moves very rapidly (apparently it was even faster in 0E, to prevent PCs from running away from it). Yet it's one of the few creatures in the original Monster Manual to have literally no means of hurting organic beings; a damage rating of precisely zero. About the only other thing we know about it at this point is that it's generally solitary, and has a purely animal level of intelligence (albeit higher than, say, most giant insects).In 2E, the creature takes on its arthropod form for the first time, although it's more insectoid than lobster-like. The limbs resemble those of insects, although there are only four of them, rather than six. (A lobster, of course, has ten, if you count the claws). The body is segmented and covered with what may well be chitin, and there are signs of segmentation on the tail, too, although the more ornate structure on the tail tip is said to be made of "bone". The creature has mandibles instead of a beak, and short antennae on its head, where we'd expect them to be in an insect, as well as the much larger ones on either side of its mouth.
Apart from the admittedly drastic change in physical appearance, however, it's no different than it was in 1E.
3E
The 3E version is somewhat less insectile than in the previous edition, but still very clearly an arthropod. The limbs are more sturdy, more plausibly capable of holding up what must be a heavy body, and once again end in three toes, albeit a different shape and arrangement than in 1E. The forehead antennae have gone, and the tail structure is now fringed with what are probably tufts of hair. Otherwise, the bodily structure is much the same, with chitinous plates in roughly the same arrangement, mandibles (it's also apparent that the labium and labrum seen in insects are also present in the mouthparts), a short neck, and so on.
It's described as being "the size of a pony"... which it's clarified means about three feet tall. So a Shetland pony, then?
In terms of its statistics, it matches the earlier versions quite faithfully. One thing that does become apparent is that it's very agile, which is a large part of why it's difficult to injure, even with wooden weapons. Even so, its chitinous (or bony?) hide is still as resilient as, say, mail armour. For the first time in this edition, it is capable of biting in self-defence, although this is fairly ineffective. Presumably, since it's hard to see that larger monsters wouldn't want to try and eat it, it relies on speed and a thick exoskeleton to ensure its survival.
5E
Again, the body form doesn't change too much in this edition. The segmental plates are more scalloped, and the tail more heavily armoured, but the general pattern and the shape of the tail tip remains the same. Perhaps it's a different species of the same creature (Ferrugo ornata rather than Ferrugo vulgara?) Having said which, the mouth is noticeably different, with four 'mandibles', each having a pair of vertebrate-looking teeth on them, and what may be labial palps. The body may be at least partially insectile, but the head, despite what the text says, is not.
Physically, the creature is less agile than before, although it still runs reasonably fast - about a third faster than a typical unencumbered human. The hide is not much tougher than thick leather now, but, on the other hand, the creature is not only more adept at biting, but has much stronger jaws and sharper teeth than before, so this at least becomes a meaningful threat. Since the signature ability is much weaker in this edition than in previous ones, that's necessary to keep it alive in a fight, but even with it, it's easier to take down than it was before.
If still a definite inconvenience.
If we ignore the 1E version, it's clear that the rust monster is a kind of arthropod. However, it has more than enough distinctions from any real arthropod to mean that it, like the ankheg and the remorhaz, does not fit into any real-world classification. It's probably closer in form to an insect than anything else, but the mere fact that it has four legs, rather than six, rules out the possibility that it actually is one.
Looking at its general body form, we can see that it has a head with a short neck, attached to a thorax which appears to consist of five segments, rather than an insect's three. And, of course, only two of those segments bear legs, rather than all of them doing so. The legs seem to have the same number of joints as those of an insect, although it's hard to tell in some images, and, from 3E onwards, what would be the tarsus (the insect's foot) is more robust and fused into a single structure than it typically is in insects.
Then we have the tail. This is segmented in all editions, and it seemingly corresponds to what should be the abdomen. An abdomen so small and narrow in comparison to the thorax isn't really seen in insects, but a number of crustaceans do have such an arrangement, so it's perfectly reasonable. One consequence of this, incidentally, is that the anus, and probably also the genital opening, are actually close to the end of the tail, rather than where one might expect them to be in a vertebrate.
It's not clear what the structure at the end of the rust monster's tail is supposed to be for (assuming it's not an actual propeller, as was perhaps intended in the original toy). It seems to consist of lateral projections from the final segment, and as such, might be equivalent to the uropods and telson of many crustaceans - together these form the three-part flap-like structure at the end of a lobster's tail. If so, they're highly modified, but so is the rest of the animal. One possibility is that they are used in signalling between different rust monsters, showing excitement, hostility, readiness to mate, etc.
Moving back to the head, there is the rather significant question of the antennae. All insects have antennae, which are also found in many other arthropods, but the position here is unusual, flanking the mouth rather than being up on the forehead or close to the eyes. One could also point out that, in 2E, the animal clearly has an additional set of antennae, more or less where we'd expect them to be. While two pairs of antennae is, in fact, the norm among crustaceans, it's not seen in insects or other arthropods.
One possible explanation for this is that the 'antennae' aren't really antennae at all. Certainly, that's what they'd be called in the actual D&D world, given their appearance. (In technical parlance, they are geniculate, possessing a sharp bend, as often seen in ants, wasps, and beetles, and hemi-plumose, having numerous hairs along one side only, which is anatomically plausible, but not so common). But, instead, their position implies that they might be homologous with the maxillae of insects and crustaceans, a pair of jointed palps that normally help to carry food to the mouth, but can be modified to carry out other functions.In terms of their internal anatomy, rust monsters are likely to follow the usual arthropod pattern. That is, the heart is a long tube running along the back, the main nerve cord is on the underside, and it likely breathes through openings on its flanks. Compared with most insects, most of the organs must be pushed forward into the thorax, given how narrow the abdomen/tail is, but there's no reason that this would be especially problematic. It's likely that, as in insects (but not most crustaceans), the excretory organs open directly into the gut, rather than requiring a separate orifice.
Early sources stated that rust monsters have birth to live young, but this was the 1E version that seems to be a vertebrate. While some arthropods do, indeed, birth live young (scorpions, for instance), it's unusual, and it seems more likely that rust monsters lay eggs. Perhaps they do so close to geologic mineral veins, to give the young something to eat when they emerge.
Which, naturally brings us to the rust monster's signature power, which is controlled by the antennae, and presumably is also inherent in the blood (since injuring the creature has the same effect as it attacking you). There is no way to justify this according to real-world science; it's obviously magic. Even in 5E, where it's comparatively slow, it destroys metals with far greater speed than is possible in nature. Nonetheless, we can say that what it's doing is pulling water vapour and molecular oxygen from the atmosphere to combine their atoms with metallic iron to produce a mixture of iron oxide and iron hydroxide. Or, in other words, rust.
This ability also affects, we're told, mithral and adamantine, which are apparently iron alloys in D&D - or at least Forgotten Realms. However, it seems unlikely that this is what Tolkein intended when he invented mithril since what he was describing seems more like titanium than anything else. Granted, there's no reason to suppose that he was actually thinking of anything that genuinely exists, but, whether it's supposed to be titanium or 'cool but imaginary metal' it seems that you get it directly from ore, not by alloying something with iron.
But Forgotten Realms may be different. It spells it differently, after all.
And this only applies to 5E anyway, since that's the only edition that specifies the metal has to be ferrous. In earlier editions, rust monsters can corrode any metal at all. In the real world, while any metal will oxidise if only you try hard enough, it is really quite difficult to do with corrosion-resistant metals such as silver, gold, platinum and, yes, titanium. But, hey, it's magic.
On the basis that the reaction most readily found in nature is the one that the rust monster induces, it seems likely that it turns copper into green verdigris-like copper hydroxide. Similarly, lead would turn to 'red lead', tin to white stannic oxide, silver to black silver oxide, gold... well probably to yellowish-orange gold hydroxide. Platinum oxide is dark brown, and, for what it's worth, titanium oxide is white.
How this works on what's supposedly the natural diet of metal ores is tougher to envisage. The most common iron ore, for instance, already is iron oxide... you can't really rust it any further.
But, even ignoring all of that, it's not at all clear what the rust monsters wants the metal for. It does, in every other respect, appear to be an organic being, not a metallic construct, which means that it needs to eat proteins, carbohydrates, and so on. It's not even as if its armour is made from metal, so far as we can tell, so it isn't sequestrating it somewhere for a specific purpose. While such elements might have some other metabolic use, rust monsters eat nothing but metal (or just iron, depending on edition), so how they build up muscles, connective tissue and so on is a mystery.
Of course, there are such things as iron-oxidising bacteria in the real world, and these have been proposed as a partial explanation for what the rust monster is up to, supposedly living in its gut and/or on the antennae. While such bacteria do indeed oxidise iron to get the energy they need to live, they also require regular nutrients alongside it, and they don't excrete anything nutritious as a byproduct (ferric sulphate, mainly).
One can only imagine that there's something alchemical going on in the monster's guts, transforming iron back into carbon and the other elements needed to survive. Which is a rather roundabout way of doing things, but, hey, at least it doesn't have many natural competitors for its food supply.
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