Animal Rights Activist Outraged Over Video of Air-Frying Live Crabs

Animal rights activist Varun Virlan says he’s horrified at a video that has gone viral — showing a woman seasoning and then air-frying two crabs while they were still alive!

ICYMI … a TikToker posted a cooking video last week showing how she prepared a dish featuring blue crabs — she seasons some potatoes and corn, then the live crustaceans themselves, before placing them, still alive, in a glass-bottom air-fryer and cooking them for 15 minutes, with the camera showing their demise.

We spoke to Virlan, the digital media director of Animal Save Movement, who says videos like these are exactly the problem with how crabs are excluded from being considered protected animals — like dogs, cats, horses — and are seen more like vegetables than animals.

Virlan asks people to take notice that crab cruelty started way before the person in the TikTok even touched the air-fryer … and how important it is we understand the whole cycle of abuse and violence the creatures were subjected to, beginning when they were ripped away from their ocean home.

Virlan says the poster is simply doing it for the views — which is unacceptable in his opinion — and TikTok needs to take accountability for letting content like this be published and go viral.

He ends his thought by saying if you’re appalled by this video, just think about all the other animals on the planet, and extend empathy to all other sentient animals — and urges folks to use that anger for something good.

Viral crab TikToker Howie the Crab’s mom — Laura Porter — took to social media to share her thoughts on the viral video, saying she wants to believe the poster doesn’t realize the crabs feel the pain.

Porter, similarly to Virlan, says crabs deserve to be treated better, like pets … and says they are a lot smarter than we think, remembering faces, pain, and even sign language.

Howie is hard at work growing new mouth parts, esophagus, stomach lining, intestines, and gills in preparation to molt. During this time she doesn’t eat. She must survive on stored calories alone. So now, we wait…#howiethecrab #hardhat #moltwatch2023 pic.twitter.com/juePgDyZva

— Howie’s Mom (@HowieTheCrab) July 31, 2023
@HowieTheCrab

Howie’s mom begs viewers not to put crabs in an air-fryer because they take a long time to die … and she’s sick of these videos not being taken down.