Wildlife rescuers caught a huge female king cobra that was hiding in a family's home in central Thailand.

The reptile catchers arrived at the single-storey property after a terrified resident reported the 12ft beast that slithered into her home on May 25.

They found the venomous creature curled behind laundry baskets in a corner of a storage room in Kamphaeng Phet province.

Footage shows the experts deftly handling the reptile with bare hands as it tried to hide under a wooden cabinet. Furious at the disturbance, the cobra then lunged out of its hiding spot and tried to attack.

The rescuers said they spent 20 minutes before managing to subdue the serpent, which was later contained in a plastic crate.

The team said they had planned to use the cobra in a training session to help rescue workers handle venomous reptiles. When the exercise was postponed, they said they decided to release it into its natural habitat instead.

An officer said: 'The king cobra was not aggressive and had beautiful golden scales. After a week in captivity, we had to bathe her and scrub her because she was dirty. We wanted her to be clean before freeing her back into the wild.'

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.