Why does raw meat move

Many people say that they want their meat so rare that it is still moving, but recently a Filipino butcher called their bluff.

Surprised Filipino shoppers couldn't believe their eyes when they spotted a beef slab twitching in a market in the shocking video below.

Youtube user Jaime Tolentino uploaded the viral video, shot in a butcher's shop in Tagaytay, in the Cavite province in the Philippines, reported the Mirror.

More than 304,000 people have watched the video.

In the clip, spasms run all over a huge marbled beef cut that hangs from a ceiling hook in a butcher's shop. The twitches last until the video cuts off without stopping or slowing down, giving off the impression that the meat is somehow still alive. This continues for well over a minute.

While it might seem unsettling to eat meat that could come back to life, this is actually a fairly common phenomenon in freshly-butchered animals, according to the Daily Mail.

Nerve endings in the flesh continue to fire after death, which can sometimes cause the muscles to move and pulsate until the nerves fully die much later.

However, it is highly unlikely that a shopper would find something like this in an American grocery store, as the twitching only lasts for up to an hour or so after death, so consumers only find this in the very freshest cuts of meat.

The Mirror suggests that maggots lurking beneath the flesh can also cause this phenomenon, which would look very similar to nerve spasms, although they would be easy to spot after cutting the meat open and looking inside.

A woman in Shadong, China, had a similar experience earlier this year, when she saw that the steak she had just purchased from the local butcher appeared to be having spasms. She later found out that the eerie movement is an indication of freshness and that her beef was fine to eat, although the harmless lifelike movement could be enough to put some squeamish folks off of their steak dinners.

Sources: Daily Mail, Mirror, Youtube

Photo Credit: Screenshot/Youtube

Warning: Graphic images. Some people like their beef blue but we think this might be taking things a little too far

The next time you tuck into your rare beef steak you might want to think twice - in case anything like this ever happens.

Because this footage shows how a slab of meat hanging in the butchers continued to move as though alive, despite being slaughtered and skinned.

The meat can be seen pulsating in several places as it swings from the hook on the roof in Tagaytay Market in the Phillipines.

Most people claim that a twitching piece of meat indicates freshness.

It is usually a phenomenon caused by nerve endings still firing and causing muscles to move, which can occur for an hour so after the central nervous system dies.

The clip was uploaded to YouTube by Jaime Tolentino and captures the meat moving for around three minutes or so before it cuts off.

More than 304,000 people have now viewed the footage.

Still alive: Nerve endings are likely to cause the bizarre movements - or it could be maggots beneath the skin

Earlier this year, a video emerged of a pulsating slab of raw beef captured by a woman in China.

Theories included the idea that the steak could be infested with maggots, which would create the movement beneath the flesh.

Freshly cut meat spasming from interestingasfuck

On the morning of June 25, Ms Cheng Jining Surabaya bought a slab of beef from a butcher in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong, and took it home. An hour later, she says, she lay the meat out on the counter and was about to slice it, when she noticed that it was twitching and pulsing vigourously, as if it had its very own heartbeat. She claims she captured the phenomenon on her phone, which you can see above.

"It looks like it is still alive, or that there are worms or something inside," Ms Cheng told reporters the following day. "However, when I cut it open I didn't find any worms, just twitching."

The validity of the claim and the footage has been brought into question, but after an examination of the meat, Lv Suwen from the Lixia District of Jinan City Animal Health Authority said it was perfectly safe to eat. The explanation given by Lv is that the cow was recently slaughtered and butchered, and the nerve endings in this particular region of the animal had not yet died.

"You can rest assured, this piece of meat is very fresh and is from a freshly slaughtered animal. The central nervous system is dead, but the nerve endings in the muscles are still firing, resulting in the jumping. This will stop after a short time," Lv told the press, adding that tampering was unlikely, having never seen a case of drugs or hormones being used to illicit such a response in raw meat.

The problem with this explanation, Australian butcher Chris Martin from Lucas Meats in Sydney told 9News, is that these nerve endings couldn't possibly have still be firing for more than 90 seconds after the animal was slaughtered, let alone 60 minutes. "When an animal is killed there will often be involuntary spasms," he said, but added that the window of time for this to occur is extremely brief.

Meanwhile, how'd you like to see a turtle's heart beating outside its body, several hours after the animal had been killed? In the video below, YouTuber reggiefavre explains that she killed a turtle for a meal, and even after completely extracting the heart, it continued to beat for hours. Back in 1957, researchers reported in The American Biology Teacher that an alligator snapping turtle had been killed and decapitated in the States, and its heart continued beating for an incredible five days.

The reason the heart can beat after death - in humans, the brain can stop functioning but the heart will keep beating, for up to an hour if outside the body - is that the beating of the heart is regulated not by the brain, but by nerve cells and chemicals contained in the organ itself.

Gizmodo explains:

"The heart itself is a two part pump: one part electrical, the other is plumbing. The electrical part is mediated by electrolytes like sodium, potassium and calcium. The electricity created is what 'shocks' the heart and causes it to contract and squeeze blood out to the body."

I don't want to do it, but I have to, so… Indiana Jones, eat your heart out. (I'm sorry.)