Watch: Crawfish Amputates Its Own Claw to Escape the Boil

The video might call it a crayfish, but that's just because people not from the South like to be wrong about everything all the time. Don't let that stop you from checking it out, though!

In a video posted to Chinese social media site, Weibo, from a restaurant in Suzhou City, the crawfish can be seen severing its own claw to escape the boiling water. Impressed by the little critter's survival instincts, the person who shot the video, Weibo user Jiuke, decided it had earned the right to live.

"I let him live," said Jiuke. "I already took him home and am raising him in an aquarium."

The best news for the crawfish is that his claw will grow back. Crawfish can regenerate lost limbs as they grow and shed their exoskeletons, so with a little luck, he'll have two functioning claws very soon. Although, depending on how old the little guy is, it might not be a full-sized pincer.

Introduced to China in the 1920s, crawfish were originally viewed as pests by rice farmers before they gained a reputation for being the delicious mudbugs they are. In a report from China's Ministry of Agriculture, the country produces 850,000 tons of the critters, accounting for 70% of the world's crawfish.