China's new shellfish museum that's shaped like a massive CRAB

A Chinese city has built a museum that's dedicated to crab and looks like a crab.

It is being constructed in Suzhou, a region in eastern China famous for its crabs
With its green shell, hairy legs and gigantic claws, the edifice looks like a Chinese mitten crab
Has drawn impassioned protests over the impact of a spiritual place
It will house a museum which celebrates the local crab-eating culture and is set to open next year

The three-storey museum, designed to resemble the famous Chinese mitten crab, will introduce the crustacean's living habitat and celebrate the locals' tradition of eating the shellfish.

Measuring 16 metres tall (52 feet), the 'super crab' is expected to become a landmark for the Yangcheng Lake region, where thousands of tonnes of Chinese mitten crabs are bred every year for the market.

Construction workers told that in order to design the building, the architects zoomed in on a picture of the shellfish species 1,000 times in order to capture its physical features.

Then they made a small model of the building to ensure the final structure would be as vivid as possible.

The massive structure occupies 273.16 square metres (2940 sq ft) and is situated on the eastern side of the Yangcheng Lake.

The exterior of the mitten crab is made of stainless steel and it's so vivid you can even see the hair on its legs

The museum is due to open in the second half of 2018 as constructions of the infrastructure is still ongoing

The museum is expected to become a new landmark of the area, where thousands of tonnes of crabs are bred every year.