Featured Image Credit: bhofack2 via Getty Images
Topics: Social Media, TikTok
Rachael Davis
A viral video showing some recently-butchered meat somehow coming alive has frightened people into a vegetarian diet.
If you’ve got the stomach for it, check it out here.
The video shows a cut of beef pulsating like a pot of boiling water. It’s freaky footage, but thankfully it’s not a sign that the zombie apocalypse has arrived.
It’s jiggling like Louis Theroux's money doesn't, as it turns out, because of salt.
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This particular cut of meat is so fresh that there are still active neurons in amongst the juicy bits. They of course don’t have a connection to a brain any more, but the system that makes them work can continue even post-butchery.
When salt is laid over a cut this fresh, the neurons react to a polarised charge created by the salt crystals.
“All cells are polarised, which means the concentrations of charged atoms, called ions, of the fluid inside them is different from the fluid outside them,” said an article in Scientific American.
“It is this difference in ion concentrations that creates a difference in charge (or voltage) across membranes.
“This difference - called a membrane potential - allows neurons to work.
“Neurons are highly specialised cells which process and transmit electrical signals.
“When not activated, neurons maintain their membrane potential by actively pumping out sodium ions and pumping in potassium ions, keeping a voltage difference of roughly -70 millivolts.
“When a neuron is activated, however, specific channels open that allows sodium ions to flood in.
“This rapid change in the charge difference causes potassium channels to open, allowing potassium to flow out.
“At a certain point, the channels all close, and those active pumps work towards restoring the resting membrane potential - but not before triggering channels nearby to open.
“That's how the signal moves from one end of the neuron to the other - channels open in one area, which causes channels nearby to open, and so on and so forth from one end to the other.”
How spooky!
Many of us will of course be familiar with the experiments that found severed frogs’ legs can still be made to move when an electrical current is applied, but it’s surprising to see a similar effect can be created with salt alone.
Friendly scientific explanation notwithstanding, the footage has put some people off meat for life.
“It's not cool at all,” said one comment. “I feel creepy,"
Another added: “Well, this picture could make me give up eating meat.”
“I've just ordered a salad,” quipped a third.
Another announced their lifestyle change to the world: “Yo! I ain't eating meat again.”
In fairness, it’s hardly the most appetising video.