This is the amazing moment a woman sunbathing in South Africa catches a cobra before it can strike.
The girl, sitting by a lake in Robertson, Western Cape, wearing nothing but a bikini, is captured on video performing the amazing feat seconds after she had been chatting to a friend off-screen.
She uses lightning quick reflexes to grab the reptile by its throat as it launches through the air at her, while a pair of dogs watch on from the waterside, seemingly too terrified to intervene.
She then turns to see it and with quick reflexes reaches out to grab it as it approaches her
She then holds the reptile in the air by its neck, despite sunbathing in her bikini moments earlier
Or does she? Eagle-eyed viewers on the internet have spotted the whole incident is a sham.
Another person can be seen in a shadow at the bottom of the screen reeling in the snake using a fishing rod, although the wire does not show up on camera.
The video has been uploaded to YouTube where it has already been viewed thousands of times.
But eagle-eyed viewers have spotted the shadow in the bottom right where another person is apparently seen reeling in the snake using what seems to be a fishing rod
When she grabs the snake, the shadow of the person can clearly be seen reacting with the rod
Some people were fooled by the clever trick but many spotted the shadow straight away, despite the video only lasting for nine seconds.
In the comments, Mike Welling said: ‘You can see the shadow from the fishing rod that is moving it. But nice prank had it worked.’
‘Kingofbigmac’ added: ‘So fake, they don’t move that fast, snakes don’t move in a straight line. You can see the fishing pole.’
The anonymous prankster has since admitted the gag, and said it was done to scare his sister, although she reacted much differently than he expected.
He said: ‘It was a prank on my sister. Yes it was pulled via fishing rod with fluorocarbon line.
‘My brother and I was trying to scare my sister but it seems that she was prepared, seeming that I grew up catching snakes along that river since I was just a boy and she would sometimes join me.
‘She did not handle it as we expected her to, very much impressed!’
Cobras are typically venomous snakes which have extendable ‘hoods’ around their heads and necks.
There are more than 20 different species of cobras, many of which are deadly including the King cobra and the Spitting cobra. They are generally found in southern Africa and southern Asia.