A Thai man was terrified after going to the toilet and seeing a COBRA inside the bowl peering up at him.

Ton Mongkolnamit visited the loo at his home in Bangkok, Thailand, when he had the nightmare encounter in the early hours of the morning on August 4.

He stepped into the bathroom and saw the snake's beady eyes staring at him with its head resting on the toilet seat.

Ton said he was frightened by the reptile and screamed for his wife to call the emergency services.

Animal handlers arrived at dawn and reached into the toilet using snake catching rods. They were able to lasso the cobra's head and drag it to safety.

Ton said: "If that night I did not do a quick scan through my toilet, I might be bitten by the snake."

The rescue team took the snake to the local fire station where it will be held alongside other captured snakes before being released into the wild hundreds of miles away.

Bangkok - a city built on swampland - has a large population of wild snakes living in the city's waterways and wasteland.

The emergency services receive hundreds of thousands of call-outs each year to deal with snake encounters.