For a woman dining at a hotpot restaurant in China, the tables were turned – literally – when her unremarkable meal fought back and caused a painful seizure.
The moment was captured on video and posted to a TikTok account that documents food and rural life in China. In the one-minute clip, which has been viewed nearly five million times, the woman is seen picking up the animal by its antennae – her first mistake – and attempting to throw it into the pot of boiling broth along with a bundle of crab legs.
However, after the shrimp wriggled out of her grasp, she tried to hold it with a pair of chopsticks. On the second attempt, the shrimp caught one of its front parts on her right wrist and then managed to impale her left finger as she tried to pull it free.
As the poor woman screamed in pain, a second person, who appeared to be a restaurant employee, came to her aid outside of the camera’s view. But the shrimp had bitten firmly and it took about 50 agonizing seconds for the shrimp to break free, screaming and crying the whole time.
The woman’s painful ordeal didn’t garner much sympathy in the comments, however, with many siding entirely with the shrimp. “Good for the shrimp!! She didn’t give up without a fight,” wrote one commenter, while another added that they were rooting for the shrimp. “When the food fights back,” quipped another user.
As many commenters have also pointed out, the shrimp in question was most likely a mantis shrimp. This carnivorous species has powerful grasping organs that it uses to attack and kill its prey, either by impaling, stunning or dismembering it. In fact, mantis shrimps are sometimes called “thumb splitters” because of their ability to inflict painful wounds if not handled carefully, as this woman no doubt learned the hard way.
Yet despite the dangers of handling them, mantis shrimps are consumed in many parts of the world, including China, Japan, the Philippines and the Mediterranean. They are prized for their sweet-tasting flesh, which is more like that of lobsters. Of course, there is a reason we don’t handle lobsters with our bare hands, and anyone attempting to prepare live mantis shrimp should be especially careful.
