Someone Made a Japanese Spider Crab Out of Paracord — Complete With Crab Miso Inside

What's going on

Paracord is a type of lightweight nylon rope originally used in parachutes. Crafters have adopted it for bracelets, keychains, and decorative knotwork — but one Japanese artist took things somewhere nobody expected. A crafter known as @donabe58 built a Japanese spider crab (*takaashi-gani* — the world's largest arthropod, with legs spanning up to 3.7 meters) entirely out of paracord, with wire running through each leg so it stands on its own and can be posed.

What really got people wasn't the size or the poseable legs. It was that the shell opens — and inside, there's crab miso. *Kani miso* (蟹味噌) is the Japanese culinary term for crab hepatopancreas, a rich paste found inside the shell that's considered a delicacy. Someone had painstakingly recreated it in rope. The crab went viral when a friend shared it, and the replies were unanimous: the crab miso was the part that broke everyone.