Glass air fryer crabs and the rising trend of animal abuse on TikTok

Euronews

10-05-2025

'How is that not a community guideline violation? I feel like I just watched a crime.' That's what TikTok user @werty1627 said when she posted her response to the latest viral TikTok that spawned countless reaction videos and stitches (where users clip parts of other creator's videos into their own).
In this one, a woman whose screen name is Chels is making typical recipe content. It starts out uneventfully, her chirpy voiceover narrating the action in the style you come to expect from such material. 'Y'all let's make a crab boil in the air fryer…'
You see her hands, clad in blue plastic gloves adding potatoes and corn to the bowl of a glass air fryer. But that's where the fun ends and the video takes a turn.
She adds two live Maryland blue crabs to the bowl and proceeds to dump enough seasoning on them to colour the whole dish orange. She then states that she turned the air fryer on to 400 degrees Fahrenheit (200 C) and cooked them for 15 minutes while she looked on.
She goes on to sheepishly say, 'Do not knock it until you try it. It was sad watching them kinda…you know. But these crabs came out so good and juicy. I was not expecting them to come out this good.'
But the internet disagrees. The overwhelming take from across the app was that cooking crabs alive is, to steal a phrase from the kids, diabolical.
Josh Cottle is an anatomy teacher and self-proclaimed science nerd. And with nearly a million followers and 27 million likes, he's one of the most beloved science creators on TikTok.
He said, 'This is terribly inhumane. Crabs […] have a pretty advanced nervous system. They have nociceptors just like you and have demonstrated avoidance behavior from pain.
'They can learn a stimulus and avoid it in the future. They will also demonstrate something called limb guarding. If something is injured, like if they break their claw, they will guard that and keep it away from further stimulation, indicating that they do feel pain.'
Research from the University of Gothenburg backs him up. Their study published in October 2024 is among the first to prove that painful stimuli are sent to the brain of shore crabs, providing evidence for pain in crustaceans.
Paul McCartney's famed quote became a popular animal rights slogan, "If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian."
But this video suggests that we are a long way off from that. Despite watching the crabs' painful demise through a glass air fryer, few users declared they were going vegetarian.
Instead, social media has turned the slaughterhouse into a spectacle, and this is an escalation of what people are willing to do for views and virality.
One can argue that the countless stitches and comment backlash indicate that animal cruelty is deeply unpopular, but unpopularity doesn't mean it can't be monetised. Rage bait views are still views nonetheless and, frankly, negative reactions make videos trend just as highly as, if not more than, positive ones.
According to a 2024 report from the UK Safer Internet Centre, there has been a significant rise in animal abuse reports across social media channels.
This correlates with 2023 findings from the RSPCA, which attributes a rise in animal abuse in England and Wales to social media, citing their Kindness Index, a national survey of attitudes towards animal welfare. Their research found that 43 per cent of 16- to 17-year-olds had witnessed cruelty online that year, with Instagram, TikTok and X being the main platforms on which they saw it.
Another case in point: just this past week, an American woman in a suburb of Philadelphia was found guilty on four charges of aggravated cruelty to animals.
According to police, Anigar Monsee tortured animals to gain popularity on social media. In one video, Monsee is seen with a chicken.
Speaking to Action News, Upper Darby Police Superintendent Timothy Bernhardt said, "During the video, she is soliciting more likes and more viewers. And once she gets to the point where she is satisfied with the number of viewers, she then proceeds - over the course of 10 minutes - to harm and ultimately kill that chicken."
Such a conviction would be impossible to secure for crabs, however.
In the United States, crabs, being invertebrates, are not explicitly covered under federal animal cruelty statutes like the Animal Welfare Act, which primarily applies to warm-blooded animals and certain invertebrates like some marine mammals and farm animals.
In the European Union, animal welfare laws tend to be more comprehensive and include protections for a wider range of animals, including certain invertebrates like crustaceans.
The EU's legislation on animal welfare, such as Regulation (EC) No 338/97 and subsequent amendments, has increasingly recognised invertebrates, especially crustaceans like crabs and lobsters, as capable of feeling pain and stress.
Specifically, the EU has taken steps to improve the humane treatment of crustaceans, including regulations around how they should be kept and slaughtered to minimise suffering. For instance, some countries have banned live boiling of lobsters and crabs without stunning, reflecting a recognition of their capacity to suffer.
Unfortunately, Chels - now dubbed by TikTok's search as the 'glass air fryer crab lady' and who could not be reached for comment at the time of this writing - did not get that memo.
She declares near the end of her video that she will be air frying her crabs from now on. No word yet on whether or not her future crab dinners will come with a show.
A puff of white smoke, a procession of Swiss Guards, and Habemus Papus: we have Pope Leo XIV.
Most people knew little about Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost before he became head of the Catholic Church yesterday, but his views are now the subject of intense speculation and analysis.
What does the first US-born Pope's appointment mean for climate change and environmental issues? Will he be a strong successor to Pope Francis, who was credited with being an 'unflinching global champion of climate action'?
Time will tell, but there are reasons to be hopeful that the 69-year-old Pontiff will take up his predecessor's mantle on this vital global front.
New Pope Leo "is outspoken about the need for urgent action on climate change", according to the College of Cardinals Report, an initiative from an international team of Catholic journalists and researchers which profiles would-be Popes to help the cardinals make an informed choice.
Last November, during a seminar in Rome dedicated to discussing climate change, then-Cardinal Prevost stressed it is time to move 'from words to action.' He said the answer to this challenge must be based on the Social Doctrine of the Church.
'Dominion over nature' - the task which God gave humanity - should not become 'tyrannical,' he said. It must be a 'relationship of reciprocity' with the environment.
Prevost - who was president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America and Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops - cautioned against the 'harmful' consequences of technological development.
He reiterated the Holy See's commitment to protecting the environment, pointing to a simpler embrace of existing green technology, such as the Vatican installing solar panels and shifting to electric vehicles.
According to the College of Cardinals Report, "He aligns closely with Pope Francis' environmental priorities."
Prevost spent many years working as a missionary in Peru, where he also holds citizenship. Christine Allen, director and chief executive of Catholic aid agency CAFOD, says this means he 'brings with him the vital perspective of the Global South, elevating voices from the margins to centre stage.'
Pope Leo takes the top job at a critical moment in human history.
Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are now 50 per cent higher than during pre-industrial times - largely due to burning fossil fuels. This has raised global temperatures by 1.3°c, unleashing a slew of increasing climate disasters - from heatwaves to droughts, floods and wildfires.
These are realities that US President Donald Trump's administration is seeking to suppress and avoid. As just the latest example in a litany of climate action cutbacks, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will no longer track the cost of climate change-fueled weather disasters.
The Cardinals will no doubt have considered Trump's outsized geopolitical influence when deciding to elect a Pope from the US.
And Leo has already shown that he is not afraid to stand up to the self-styled US strongman, and call out the perceived moral failings of his administration.
In February, his X account shared a post which was critical of the administration's deportation of a US resident to El Salvador, and then a critical comment piece written about a TV interview given by Vice-President JD Vance to Fox News.
"JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others," read the first post, repeating the headline from the commentary on the National Catholic Reporter website.
As spiritual leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics, the Pope has a significant potential role to play in getting people to prioritise climate action and rallying the conscience of other world leaders.
During his pontificate, Pope Francis wrote two encyclicals - pastoral letters addressed to the whole world - on climate change.
Published ahead of the UN climate conference in 2015, his first, Laudato si': On Care For Our Common Home 'provided a clear moral imperative for taking climate action, supporting the Paris Climate Change Agreement,' according to Christiana Figueres, an architect for that landmark deal to limit global heating to 1.5C.
Pope Francis continually used his position to highlight issues of inequality in the consequences of climate change.
'Now more than ever, the world needs a strong and steadfast moral voice,' CAFOD chief Christine Allen wrote in a statement yesterday.
'Saint Pope John Paul II, and Popes Benedict and Francis, all spoke powerfully on climate change and the debt crisis as two of the most pressing issues of their time, and we look forward to working with the Vatican and Pope Leo XIV, to continue and strengthen this work in response to today's challenges.'
The Pope, she adds, 'is an important player on the global stage. He is one of the few people who can bridge political divides and bring world leaders together for the common good.'