This is the hair-raising moment animal catchers had to carefully untangle a python and king cobra that were locked in a fierce battle.

Shopkeeper Nang Kanokon, 38, was horrified when she found the two fearsome snakes battling it out in the store room of her mobile phone store in Krabi, southern Thailand, on December 11 at 8pm.

She recoiled with fright and quickly called the emergency services who had the unenviable task of trying to snare the deadly duo.

The python had wrapped itself around the body of cobra in an unsuccessful attempt at squeezing it to death, while the cobra had been unable to deliver a fatal bite to its rival.

Footage shows how one man had to pin down the head of the highly venomous black king cobra while another held back the irritable python.

Their colleague then carefully loosened the python like ''untying a knot'' and after ten minutes the warring reptiles were separated.

Nang said: ''I haven't used this room for about two months because we have been moving to another shop. I wanted to get something from a box and I saw the snakes on the floor.

''It was very,very scary. I'm afraid of snakes, so seeing two big ones at the same time in my house was like a nightmare.''

Rescuers in the Nuea Khlong district of the province said the python was two metres long while the smaller cobra only measured one-and-a-half metres.

Both snakes were unhurt after the scrap and neither had any serious signs of injury. They were driven away in a pick-up truck and released back into the wild several miles away.