This is the astonishing moment a plucky pet puppy barked at a Siberian tiger just yards away on the roadside.

Hilarious footage of the encounter was captured by a family driving in Khabarovsk Krai, eastern Russia, on February 24.

As their car passes slowly by, the massive apex predator sits calmly in the snow by the side of the road, never taking its eyes off the family as if they were meals on wheels.

However, one car occupant seems less impressed, as a pooch can be heard barking furiously at the big cat before the clip ends.

Had the dog been outside the car, it would have made an easy meal for the large feline, known as the largest tiger in the world.

In the wild, adult males can reach nearly 400lbs and measure more than 10ft from nose to tail.

They hunt deer and are known to gulp down smaller prey like rabbits, so a small dog would have been barely a mouthful.

The species, currently listed as endangered with only about 500 individuals left in the wild, inhabits the cold-climate forests of Russia's Far East.