A cannibal king cobra was caught eating a smaller cobra in a Thai forest.

Footage shows the 8ft long predator swallowing a smaller snake whole in the undergrowth near a resident's house in Songkhla province, Thailand, on May 31.

Local snake wrangler Taweesak Boonset later arrived at the scene to dispatch the venomous creature.

He said: 'We let the cobra finish eating first before capturing it. It took around six minutes to catch and seal it inside a sack. It was around eight feet in length.'

The cobra was released into the wild, far away from the residential area.

The homeowner, Supat Teepthong, 37, said he was about to wash his hands at a faucet in his garden when he spotted the cobra's tail in the grass.

He said: 'Because of fear and shock, I hurried and called the snake-catching team for assistance. My neighbours who came to watch said they had never seen a cobra eating another of its kind before.'

Cobras sometimes cannibalise their own kin in fights over territory, mates, or resources.

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.