The demand for surgical robots has increased in recent years, accompanying the growing attention to minimally invasive surgery. To support the development of compact and cost-effective forceps for surgical robots, this paper proposes a novel forceps mechanism inspired by the pincers of crabs. The mechanism aims to reduce the number of components compared to conventional forceps, enabling a simpler, smaller, lighter, and compliant structure. Among organisms on Earth, crustaceans exhibit a high force-to-body-weight ratio, which led to our inspiration from crab chelae. The proposed mechanism, termed “Clawceps”, applies the crab’s scissor-like mechanism and incorporates the principle of leverage to stabilize force transmission. While the structure is compliant when no force is applied, the mechanism changes mode when the forceps are closed, engaging the joint to act as a fulcrum, thereby increasing the gripping force. The novel mechanism was evaluated using finite element analysis (FEA) with a PLA 3D-printed physical prototype. Models with and without a fulcrum were prepared to observe the gripping force. According to the FEA results, when the displacement was 1.5 mm, the gripping force of the model with a fulcrum was 7.8 N, while that without a fulcrum was 0.2 N. Experimental measurements with the actual prototype also showed significantly higher gripping force of the model with a fulcrum compared with that without a fulcrum, demonstrating the effectiveness of the mechanism. By implementing a mechanism that switches operation modes and transmits force using the principle of leverage, the Clawceps achieve both compliance and strong gripping force. This study successfully proved the concept of the proposed method to overcome a current limitation of compliant mechanism by incorporating principles derived from exoskeletal structures.