This 28-year-old man from Odisha, eastern India believes eating live red ants will help his body combat COVID-19.

Nayadhar Padhial an engineer by trade believes his consumption of live red ants will fight off the deadly virus.

Footage shows Padhial scaling a tree hunting for ant nests.

Padhial said: "These ants are specially used to make chutney but making chutney will reduce its medicinal property, eating them alive would retain the properties that would help boost immunity to fight against the pandemic.

"The red ants are deadly as their stings are painful, but nothing is moire painful than death so I prefer to eat them alive."

This footage was filmed on July 19.

Nayadhar Padhial is an engineer by profession and a great believer of homemade remedies from Mayurbhanj Tribal belt in Odisha, eastern India.

He feels that every food that is eaten is with a purpose and has herbal remedies and cure against deadly bacteria and viruses apart from benefitting the health.

In the latest he has found his immunity boosting power in red ants which he prefers to eat alive to retain the existing nutritional and medicinal properties which he believes would help boost his immunity against the deadly Coronavirus.

Video shows the man climbing on the top of a tree in a hunt for the special Red ants which is commonly used by tribals to make chutney (spicy sauce).

He then plucks a handful of them on a leaf and comes down on the ground. He then opens the leaf and grabs a handful of them to put it inside his mouth.

Padhial said, 'These ants are specially used to make chutney but making chutney will reduce its medicinal property, eating them alive would retain the properties that would help boost immunity to fight against the pandemic."

'The red ants are deadly as their stings are painful, but nothing is panful than death so I prefer to eat them alive.'

The red ants are specially found in the tribal belt on the top of trees. These are savoured as a delicacy among the tribals after they are crushed with different spices to make a sauce out of it.

Red Ant chutney is also said to be one of Gordon Ramsay's favourites as he himself visited the tribals just to see it getting prepared.

Padhial has now written a letter to the AAYUSH Mantralaya (Ministry of AAYUSH) to have a research on the medicinal property of the Red ants that would help the world fight the deadliest pandemic of the century.