After being swallowed alive, Japanese eels were able to escape from a predator fish’s stomach and swim to freedom through the fish’s gills, new research shows.

The young eels could spend roughly three minutes inside the fish before dying, the researcher found. Those that escaped successfully spent just under a minute liberating themselves.

To do that, the researchers assembled fish subjects in lab aquariums. The dark sleepers measured about 5.7 inches (14.5 centimeters) long — about twice the length of the juvenile A. japonica eels.

Northern snakehead fish are native to Asia, and were first found in the U.S. in 2002 in a pond in Maryland, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Baby Japanese eels have been spotted escaping from the stomachs of fish that have eaten them by backing out tail-first, as if moonwalking, first out of their esophagus and then their gills ...

Tobler feeds one of the freshwater eels living in his basement eel pit. Photograph By Carlie Burton M any a social media user has been mindlessly scrolling through their feeds until a dark room full ...