A landlord was shocked when a 13ft king cobra emerged from the ground during a house construction.

Workers were levelling the land when the venomous serpent slithered out of a burrow in Yala province, southern Thailand, on January 6.

Shocked by the snake's size and aggressive posturing, the landlord called snake wranglers for help.

Footage shows the volunteers using catch poles to drag the reptile out into the open. They managed to catch the 22lbs cobra, but a second one hiding in the same burrow escaped into the nearby forest.

The team spent 30 minutes searching but was unable to locate it.

The landlord said: 'While the tractor driver was levelling the ground by ploughing away the old bathroom floor, he discovered the large king cobra in a burrow under the concrete.

'The snake refused to leave. He said he was startled by the snake staring directly at him, so we called rescue services to capture and release it back into its natural 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.