A chubby monitor lizard was saved after it was found stuck inside a water pipe in central Thailand.

The animal wandered inside the construction site searching for food when the guard dogs spotted it before it was chased away.

To escape the dogs, it went down the drain with muddy water and tried to squeeze inside the black plastic pipe but was trapped as it was too big.

Footage shows the plump 5ft-long reptile being pulled out of the hole in the drain in Chachoengsao province on May 17.

One of the construction workers who helped rescue the lizard said he heard the dogs barking at something in the night and saw the reptile stuck in the morning.

He said: ‘We checked who the dogs were barking at in the night but there was nobody outside. In the morning we found the lizard in the pipe so we called the animal rescuers for help.’

When the rescue team arrived, the volunteers with the help of workers tied its legs using a rope and began pulling it out of the pipe.

As the pipe was too narrow for the lizard’s size, it took the team an hour before they were able to free the reptile from the drain.

The reptile was not injured so the volunteers took it with them to release back into the wild.