This is the astonishing moment a horse takes two children to school and returns home on its own in freezing temperatures.

The 18-second-long footage, shared on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, shows the children riding the animal to school on the snow-covered roads of Huocheng County, located in China’s autonomous region of Xinjiang.

Surprisingly, the animal is then seen coming back home along the same road, after it dropped off the kids on Wednesday, 13th December.

The smart animal became an internet sensation among netizens, with many debating whether it would also pick the children up from school and bring them back to their parents later.

Douyin user ‘Pleasant Goat’ said: “It won’t pick up the kids from school in the afternoon!”

User ‘I want to lose weight after eating steamed buns’ added: “It was the same when I was a kid.”

And ‘The little deer won’t suffer from insomnia’ added: “This is how I went to and from school when I was a kid.”

The video reached more than 2,000 likes and 800 shares after it posted on the social media network two days ago.