The fight for a free seat on the subway during rush hour has never made people so crabby.

The internet was sent into a storm after photos and videos of at least three live crabs, each sitting on their own seat on a TTC train, surfaced on Twitter and Facebook.

Their presence raised many questions among members of the public on social media subsequently: How did they get there? Did each really need to have a seat to his- or herself? Did they have Presto cards?

“We paid for our tickets, thank you very much,” came a tweet reply to Moran’s video, posted by a user called “Crab Riding The TTC.”

One of the viral posts of the crabby incident belongs to graphic designer Kristine Hughes, who goes by the handle of Pony Macaroni on Facebook. She told the Star that the crab incident occurred around 5:30 p.m. on Monday on a southbound train on the Yonge portion of Line 1.

Hughes and her co-worker were walking along the aisle at the front end of the train when they spotted something peculiar sitting on the seats.

Crabs.

“At first, I honestly thought they were frogs,” said Hughes.

Confused passengers were glaring at the owner, a guy who was sitting nearby.

Most were calm.

But it wasn’t long before peace was a memory.

As the train stopped at Eglinton Station, a woman, who was looking for a seat, became instantly angry when she saw the crabs and started to berate the owner, Hughes recalled.

“What is this s- -t? Why are there crabs on the seat during rush hour? Everyone’s trying to come home, and they can’t sit down, because you put crabs all over the seats!” said the woman, according to Hughes.

“I paid for their seats,” the owner replied.

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“So you paid two extra dollars for them to have their own seats on the train?” replied the woman.

She smacked the crabs, flinging them on the floor and onto the laps and feet of passengers, including a woman nearby.

She stormed off to another section of the train, said Hughes.

“A crab assault! A crab assault!” the owner yelled at the woman. “You assaulted the lady with a crab! That’s assault!”

The owner picked up the crabs and put them back on their seats.

That part of the train fell silent.

“It was too bizarre,” said Hughes, who got off at St. Clair station.

“I’ll never see something quite like it again.”

According to Hughes’ co-worker, the owner stepped off at Yonge and Bloor with the crabs packed inside a brown paper bag.

TTC spokesperson Brad Ross tried to crack down on the crustaceans, tweeting: “Leave your crabs in a bucket. Anything less is just shellfish behaviour.”

Whether this dramatic showdown actually occurred is uncertain, but what is known is that the crabs were there. They each sat in individual seats. And they baffled commuters.

The crabs are not the worst thing Torontonians have put up with on the TTC. Moran posted a poll on Twitter after her video post, asking her followers if they would rather be in a subway car with “the Despacito accordion guy or in one where every seat has a crab on it?”

The result of the 79 votes, at 76 per cent versus 24 per cent, was overwhelmingly: “Crabs! Crabs! Crabs!”