Mariia Zelenina, 22, knew she was on the day’s schedule when she started her shift as a “mermaid” at an aquarium in China’s Yunnan Province earlier this week. She did not know, however, that she was also on the menu: Mid-performance during an aquatic show as part of her job at Xishuangbanna Primitive Forest Park, Zelenina found herself snapped up, quite literally, in the jaws of a particularly famished fish. (Or perhaps one that’s just not a fan of interpretative dance?) Footage of the incident—which left Zelenina with facial bruising—quickly went viral. “It was unexpected. Of course, I was scared, but a lot of things can happen in life and you need to treat it with humor,” Zelenina later told People magazine. The fish in question was reportedly a Chinese sturgeon, an endangered species considered a “national treasure” in China. Chinese sturgeon, which can reach sizes of 14 to 16 feet, are “benthic predators” per the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—in other words, when fully grown they eat just about any other marine creatures. Even mythical ones.
A woman performing as a mermaid in a Chinese aquarium is bitten on the head by a huge fish to huge gasps from the audience. The performer survived the attack.
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