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Woman Tried Eating Live Octopus But It Attached Itself to the Woman’s Face Instead

2019-05-11 , 6:00 am

Last Updated on 2020-01-27 , 5:31 pm

Humans are stupid. I’m not pointing at a particular person (though a colleague has pointed out that Goody Feed colleagues are stupid…), but humanity as a whole is pretty dumb.

Note: this article might be pretty squeamish. If you just want a short sentence version: Don’t eat alive octopus, it dangerous, it cruel, it no good.

To be fair, sometimes people seem dumb in the pursuit of progress. The Wright brothers probably looked like dumb shits until they built a working version of the aeroplane that wouldn’t crash for no reason.

In our case, Sashimi is sliced raw fish. In order to elevate culinary experiences and the gastronomical arts, we have to go even rawer. We eat the damn thing alive.

A Chinese blogger actually tried to do exactly that for an octopus just because.

And Things Didn’t Turn Out Well

Also obviously, we have to challenge a creature bigger than our frigging faces. That kind of things always ends well.

It started off with realising that the octopus’ suction power is pretty strong, chuckling at the octopus’ struggle for survival.

You know how sometimes laughter sounds like crying? The laughter actually became actual crying later on, in the full video here.

And it’s not hard to see why when the octopus is literally trying to rip her face off.

In fact, it’s not just trying to rip her face off. The octopus was trying to eat her.

The cut that you see below is actually caused by the octopus’ beak or its mouth.

Near the end of the video, the blogger comments that she will eat it in the next video.

Amusingly, in the background, you can hear her videographer laughing as well.

You can watch the full video here.

But before you laugh at a silly woman doing stupid things,

It’s actually a thing in South Korea

In South Korea, there is a dish called San-Nakji (산낙지), usually killed before serving, but the tentacles continue to squirm even so. Some restaurants go one step further and serve it alive instead of killing it beforehand.

National Geographic video for how it is actually eaten in South Korea:

There are some differences from what the woman was doing above.

Smaller octopuses that can actually fit into your mouth.
Pulling the octopus tentacles straight, before entangling the octopus on a chopstick for ease of eating.
Dipping into a sauce.

South Koreans believe doing this is a way to build strength and stamina, and happens to be a favourite among Kendo practitioners for that reason.

Eating the octopus requires constant chewing, and is essentially a battle between your jaws and the octopus’ tentacles. This is then finished with a slimy swallow down your throat.

I tried to make her look less dumb but turns out the woman was still pretty dumb for attempting it.

This is actually a pretty cruel thing

Last I check, I don’t have eight tentacles, so the conclusion that octopuses are different creatures than humans is not hard to come to.

A MUNCHIES interview with a cephalopod (octopus species class) expert Jennifer Mather, PhD, actually shows that octopuses can feel pain even after their arms are cut off.

For humans, the brain is actually the one telling your arms to feel pain. So if you cut off your arms, you will feel pain at where it is cut off, but your actual arm wouldn’t feel anything since it is no longer connected to your brain.

Octopuses, on the other hand, can still feel pain even after that because their arms have neurons.

The least cruel way for eating octopuses is to put them into a freezer, as they don’t have “any internal temperature regulation”, which I think in this case means they can’t feel actually being frozen. This makes them unconscious, then you can deliver a painless death.

Eating Octopus might also kill you… or make you pregnant

Getting injured from eating them isn’t uncommon. It is known as a choking hazard since the tentacles can stick to the mouth or throat, and even Koreans have known to choke on it.

It’s even brought up as circumstantial evidence in a murder case in Seoul.

If that still isn’t terrifying enough for you, a South Korean woman ate some squid (ok, a little bit of sensationalism here, since that isn’t octopus, but still) and sperm bags rested in her mouth.

When eating the squid, she felt “many small squirming white bug-like organisms penetrating her oral mucosa.”. 12 sperm bags were found lodged in her tongue and gums when the doctors checked later.

As a self-proclaimed food writer, that’s got to go down into the “list of food I would never eat”, even below bugs.

At least those won’t kill me.