MANILA: A Philippine food vlogger has died after filming herself eating one of the country’s most poisonous reef crabs.
Emma Amit, 51, who had more than 200,000 followers on her Instagram account, filmed herself foraging along the mangroves near her seaside home in Puerto Princesa, on the island province of Palawan, plucking snails and prying brightly mottled crabs from coral crevices.
In a video posted on Feb 4, she holds up one of the crabs – its shell splashed with ominous reds and browns – before dropping it into a pot of simmering coconut milk. She tastes it, smiles and continues eating.
The crab was Zosimus aeneus, known across the Philippines as the “devil crab”, a reef-dwelling species with flesh that contains a potent mix of neurotoxins, including tetrodotoxin and saxitoxin.
Marine biologists consider it among the most poisonous crabs in the Indo-Pacific. Cooking does not neutralise the toxins. In severe cases, the devil crab can paralyse the consumer’s muscles, shut down his breathing and kill him within hours.
According to Philippine broadcaster ABS-CBN, Ms Amit lost consciousness shortly after consuming the crab and was rushed to hospital, where she was pronounced dead two days later. A friend who had eaten the crab also died.
When village officials visited Amit’s home in Puerto Princesa, they found a scatter of discarded shells in the rubbish. The shells were vivid and unmistakable.
“This is really saddening because they should have known,” Laddy Gemang, the local chief of Luzviminda village, told ABS-CBN.
Amit and her husband were experienced fishers, he said. “So why did she eat it? That is what I’m confused about.”
The devil crab inhabits coral reefs across the Indo-Pacific. Its toxins are believed to accumulate from the algae and micro organisms it consumes.
Ingesting even a small amount can lead to tingling in the lips and extremities, nausea, convulsions and respiratory failure. Health officials say roughly half of known severe cases in the Philippines prove fatal.
Last October, local media reported that a 54-year-old fisherman in a coastal province had died after eating the crab.
In the days since Amit’s death, village leaders have issued urgent warnings to seaside residents.
“Do not eat these dangerous devil crabs because they have claimed two lives here in our town,” Gemang said. “Don’t gamble with your lives.”
Amit is the second Filipino “food influencer” reported to have died after making food content. In 2024, a 37-year-old “mukbang” vlogger died following a stroke.
Mukbang – a portmanteau of the Korean words “meokda” (eat) and “bangsong” (broadcast) – involves videos, usually live-streamed, of a person eating large piles of food while talking to an audience.
The food content creator – who had a following of 460,000 – posted video reels of himself cooking and then eating several pieces of fried chicken and white rice. He suffered a heart attack and lapsed into a coma before succumbing to a haemorrhagic stroke. - The Straits Times/ANN
