A woman dining at a hotpot restaurant in China had the tables turned on her, quite literally, when her unassuming meal fought back and inflicted a painful attack.
The moment was caught on video and posted to a TikTok account that documents food and rural life in China. In the minute-long clip, which has been viewed nearly five million times, the woman can be seen picking the animal up by its antenna—her first mistake—and attempting to drop in in the pot of boiling broth along with a cluster of crab legs.
However, after the shrimp writhed out of her grip, she tried to wrangle it with a pair of chopsticks. On her second attempt, the shrimp latched onto her right wrist with one of its front appendages and then managed to spear her left finger when she tried to pull it off.
As the poor woman yelped in pain, a second person who appeared to be a restaurant employee came to her assistance off-camera. But the shrimp was really hooked on, and it took about 50 agonizing seconds to remove its grasp, all the while she screamed and cried.
The woman’s painful ordeal didn’t elicit much sympathy in the comments however, as many fell squarely on Team Shrimp. “Good for that shrimp!! He wasn’t going out without a fight,” wrote one commenter, while another added that they were rooting for the shrimp. “When food attacks back,” quipped another user.
As many commenters also pointed out, the shrimp in question was most likely a mantis shrimp. The carnivorous species have powerful raptorial appendages that they use to attack and kill their prey, either by spearing, stunning, or dismembering. In fact, mantis shrimp are sometimes known as as “thumb splitters” due to their ability to inflict painful wounds if not handed carefully, as this woman undoubtedly learned the hard way.
But despite the inherent dangers of dealing with them, mantis shrimp are consumed in many places around the world including China, Japan, the Philippines, and Mediterranean. They’re prized for their sweet-tasting flesh, which more closely resembles that of lobsters. Of course, there’s a reason we don’t handle lobsters with our bare hands, and anyone attempting to prepare live mantis shrimp should exercise extra caution.
