This is the eerie moment a dead fish wildly thrashes about while being fried in a pan.
The unusual scene was filmed in the city of Zhengzhou in the Chinese province of Henan last week.
According to the news site Baidu, Mr Wen bought the fish fresh from a local market and brought it home to cook for his wife.
However, while he was frying the fish in the pan, it suddenly started thrashing about and moving.
In the footage, the ‘zombie fish’ is seen moving so much that its tail falls off.
Mr Wen said he was left speechless and had never seen anything like it before, adding that the fish moved around for at least two minutes.
He waited until the fish was completely motionless before serving it to his wife, who is seen tucking in with a pair of chopsticks in the second clip.
After the video was widely shared on the Chinese social network Douyin, what TikTok is known as in China, netizens gave their opinion on the phenomenon.
One Douyin user said: “The fish was indeed dead, but the spine was not removed before going in the pan, which makes the nerves come alive, but the fish was certainly dead. Buying this kind of fish is better because it means it is fresher.”
Another netizen said: “I have seen this before. When a seafood restaurant was cooking octopus, the tentacles started moving even though the chef had already cut them into pieces. It must be the same principle.”
The most common explanation for the phenomenon is that the tissue still temporarily responds to stimuli despite the brain being dead because the muscles contain adenosine triphosphate, the main source of energy for muscle contractions.
Following a similar incident in 2018, a chemistry professor at the University of Virginia told Discovery News: “Most of the tissue…is actually still alive. Cell metabolites are nearly intact, membrane voltages or potentials that exist in nerve cells are probably still close to intact.
“Even though the brain function is missing, the tissues will still respond to stimuli.”
