A boy showed off his huge pet tarantula at a remote market where locals EAT the delicacy.

Chea, 4, took the chunky spider from his mum's street food stall, where the deep-fried snacks sell for a dollar a piece in Skuon, Cambodia, some 50 miles from the capital Phnom Penh.

The youngster - who saved his beloved pet from the dinner table - named the hairy arachnid Spidey and lets him crawl across his face, head, and body.

Footage taken this morning shows Chea standing in front of the stall while Spidey rested comfortably on his chest.

The youngster didn't seem to mind when the tarantula's long hairy limbs tickled his neck and he simply pulled his friend back to his chest. Chea even keeps Spidey in a small bucket full of leaves with a string which he carries around the market like a bag.

But while the youngster kept the tarantula as a pet, he still enjoyed his mum's cooking of fried spiders - except Spidey - which another friendly spider seller jokingly put in her mouth to tease the little boy.

She explained that Spidey had been defanged so he poses no danger.

Thankfully, Spidey was unharmed, with the protective youngster Chea yelling 'give him back, don't hurt him, he's mine'.

Deep-fried spiders are a delicacy in the Skun region of the former Khmer empire, where territory once stretched across Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. The big black spaiders are usually prepared sprinkled with salt, sugar, chili or crushed garlic and sold in street-side stalls.

It is unclear when the practice started, but some believe the population might have found tarantulas to be a readily-available food source during the barbaric Khmer Rouge period of 1975 to 1979, when communist despots seized power and set about trying to kill every adult - starting with anyone with a semblance of education, such as wearing glasses, reading or speaking coherent sentences.

The death toll is believed to have surpassed three million - almost half the population - with Khmer people savagely beaten to death in killing fields and prisons to save the cost of a bullet.

Chea's father even lost a limb from unexploded ordnance dropped by equally disturbed American warmongers Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger who obliterated Cambodian cities - murdering 150,000 residents simply as a perverse show of strength to neighbouring Vietnam.

The country has still not recovered from the period.