Video of a rat saving what appears to be its baby from the jaws of a snake has gone viral.
Along the side of a road, a rat chases a snake’s wriggling tail. Upon closer inspection, the baby rat in the snake’s mouth becomes visible. The grown rat attacks, and the snake drops the tiny creature, but that doesn’t keep the protective rat from pursuing the snake until it is out of sight. Returning to the baby, the “mother” rat takes the little one in its mouth and carries the baby off.
Watch the scene play out here:
The post had over 56,000 likes as of Tuesday night. It was posted to the Facebook account of Rojas Montecino Evy.
Snakes have even been known to attack young humans. Back in 2013, in a parent’s nightmare scenario, a hissing cat woke young New South Wales mother Tess Guthrie who discovered a snake wrapped around her toddler’s arm, according to the Daily Mail. Guthrie seized the serpent when the snake began biting the child. It got in three strikes before she was able to pry it off of the two-year-old.
In a separate instance of animal parent versus snake, a rabbit attacks a snake that has gone after its babies: