Crayfish becomes online hero by detaching claw to escape boiling soup

Seemingly inspired by the survival movie 127 Hours, a tenacious crayfish desperate to live decided to amputate its own arm to escape a boiling hotpot in China.

The daring escape, which occurred right in front of its captors who were about to eat him, was captured in an 11-second clip posted on Chinese social media platform Weibo on Monday (May 28).

The clip, which has since gone viral and received more than 635,000 views on Facebook, showed the crustacean clambering out of the hotpot with one of its claws still inside.

Presumably cooked from the boiling temperature of the spicy soup, the left claw appeared immobile.

The crayfish then decisively - or some would say, casually - used its right claw to detach the incapacitated claw, which dropped into the soup.

The creature then turned away to make its escape, but was eventually "saved" by the diner who took the video.

The diner, also known on Weibo as Jiuke, said he adopted the crayfish after that, reported Taiwan News on Wednesday.

"I let him live, I already took him home and I'm raising him in an aquarium," he told concerned netizens, who appealed to him to not eat the crayfish. It is unclear if he ate the claw.

Those concerned about the well-being of the crayfish left with only one claw need not worry, for the crustasean is able to grow back its limbs.

In 2014, a pregnant lobster which had lost both of its claws and four legs, managed to regrow all of her limbs and even claws, reported the Daily Mail.

Copyright: The Straits Times/ Asia News Network