A crafty crayfish was filmed amputating its own leg in an escape from the cooking pot.
A bold but hardly surprising move, the poor creature was about to get boiled alive at a restaurant in China before it did all it could to stop itself from being killed.
The video was shared on Chinese social media site Weibo by a user under the name Jiuke.
The clip shows the crayfish standing on the edge of the cooking pot before slicing off its own claw and wriggling away.
More than one million people have viewed the clip, and plenty of people had something to say about it.
One person wrote:
Not a vegan or someone who has sensitivities about eating meat but still can’t understand how could you find this so funny. There are huge differences between eating a sufferlessly killed animal’s meat and boiling a living thing alive.
There’s a poor animal gives up on it’s one arm to run away from the suffer of boiling alive. And there’s no humour in this, it’s an ethical situation. Such a mess.
Not sure what ‘sufferlessly’ means, and animals never don’t suffer when they’re facing the prospect of slaughter. Anyway…
Another added:
It’s awful they boil them alive. I guess his little arm got caught or was being pulled in by another crayfish. Imagine the pain he felt ripping his own arm off. Sad.
Remind me never to eat crayfish in China and I will ensure any fish I eat in the UK aren’t boiled alive too from now on.
And somebody else commented:
Hate seeing living creatures struggling. This is so cruel. This crayfish may not add much to the world apart from being food.. but it has feelings and is entitled to live too… so sad.
Most importantly, what happened to the crayfish?
Well, Jiuke told followers he’d adopted it as a pet, writing:
I let him live. I already took him home and am raising him in an aquarium.
Poor little guy, hopefully he’ll be well looked after.
Another video which surfaced from China recently showed a fish appearing to come back to life in Hengyang, Hunan Province in southern China.
Placed next to other fried fish, the video shows the animal twitch slightly before beginning to flail around – at which point somebody begins to yell.
The video was originally uploaded to Weibo, and although the fish looks dead, the video had many people raising concerns about animal abuse, with some believing the fish was suffering.
Weibo user ‘hadisi_4568’ asked:
Don’t they think that’s horrifying? Why can’t they kill the fish first before frying it?
Another person suggested the fish hadn’t been fried long enough as the nerve cells reacted to the stimuli, adding:
Give it another five minutes or so, the fish will be cooked.
IFL Science explained in a previous post – following a similar video – why these things happen.
The article says the explanation is a ‘reasonably simple one’ and also a ‘pretty common phenomenon’.
Apparently, we also see the same jerking movements from fresh raw frogs’ legs and diced squid – and sometimes in dead humans.
It goes on to explain:
So why, without signals sent and received via the brain and nervous system, or a beating heart, does dead tissue continue to move?
Although the brain and heart are not functioning, there are cells that can still respond to stimuli, for example, added sodium. Immediately after death, muscle motor neurons (the nerves that create movement within the tissue), which are triggered by electrical signals, still contain some membrane potential (difference in ion concentrations).
All cells are polarised, which means that there is a high-to-low gradient of charged atoms, or ions, from inside cells to outside them. The difference between these concentrations is what creates a charge across a membrane.
Nice.
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