A terrified family leaped from their seats when they heard a king cobra inside their sofa.

Wanwipa Makkat and his wife were relaxing at home when they heard the serpent hissing under their bottoms at their home in Songkhla province, Thailand on February 10.

The couple called the emergency services who arrived to remove the beast from inside the upturned yellow couch. It tried to fight them off by rearing up and hissing

Footage shows the skilful snake wrangled using a makeshift catching pole made from a tree branch to trap the serpent. The volunteer remained calm even as the venomous creature lunged at him with bare fangs at least three times to resist being caught.

House owner Wanwipa said: ‘I've never seen such a big snake like this before. We were so scared when we saw it and fled the house.'

The snake was slowly pulled out from under the sofa and taken out of the house to the road where it was measured. No one was hurt including the snake that was released later back in its habitat.

Researchers found that 7,000 people are treated for snake bites each year in Thailand. Suchai Suteparuk from the Division of Toxicology at Chulalongkorn University reported that 30 of those die, with cobras being the biggest killer.