A woman dining at a restaurant in China literally had the tables turned on her when her plain meal rebounded back onto her and led to a painful attack.
The moment was captured on video and posted to a TikTok account that documents food and rural life in China. The minute-long clip, which has been viewed nearly five million times, shows the woman grabbing the animal by its antenna (her first mistake) and trying to toss it into boiling broth along with a bunch of crab legs.
But after the shrimp escaped his grasp, he tried to catch it with a pair of chopsticks. On his second attempt, the shrimp grabbed onto his right wrist with one of its forelimbs and then managed to puncture his left finger when he tried to pull it away.
As the poor woman screamed in pain, a second person who appeared to be a restaurant employee came to her aid from off-camera. However, the shrimp was actually attached and it took around 50 agonizing seconds for her to remove his grip, while the woman screamed and cried.
@rural_life_china #chinesefood #chinesefoods #chineseculture
♬ original audio – 中国社会 🇨🇳
The woman's painful ordeal didn't elicit much sympathy in the comments, as many immediately joined Team Shrimp. “Good for that shrimp!! He didn't get out without a fight,” one commenter wrote, while another added that they were rooting for the shrimp. “When the food comes back,” another user joked.
As many commentators have noted, the shrimp in question was most likely a mantis shrimp. Carnivorous species have powerful predatory appendages that they use to attack and kill their prey, either by spearing, stunning, or dismembering. In fact, mantis shrimps are sometimes known as “thumb spreaders” for their ability to inflict painful wounds when not handled carefully; this woman no doubt learned this the hard way.
But despite the dangers involved in handling them, mantis shrimp are consumed in many parts of the world, including China, Japan, the Philippines, and the Mediterranean. They are prized for their sweet-tasting meat, which is more similar to lobsters. Of course, there’s a reason we don’t handle lobsters with our bare hands, and anyone trying to prepare live mantis shrimp should be extra careful.