This is the moment a sassy macaque pulls away a cucumber from a zoogoer’s grip and begins smacking the man’s hands after previously innocently eating it while being fed.

Video footage shows the monkey suddenly change its attitude towards the visitor at a zoo in Liaoning Province, north-east China.

The clip – shared on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok – shows the man feeding the monkey a cucumber through a barbed wire.

At first, the animal appears very docile as it quietly nibbles on the vegetable.

But as soon as the man lets go, the macaque immediately changes its expression to an irritated one and grabs the cucumber with one arm, while smacking the man’s hand with the other.

The two slap each other on the arms back and forth a few times before the man seemingly decides to quit and move away as the footage cuts.

The video attracted widespread attention, boasting over 55,000 likes and about 11,000 comments, with countless users apparently in awe at the monkey’s sudden mood shift.

One Douyin user titled ‘Small 5’ commented: “This is the face someone would make before borrowing money, and the face when repaying them.”

While ‘Luoluo’ wrote: “I hate monkeys the most, I was just chased and beaten by monkeys with sticks all over the canyon.”

And ‘Light smile’ said: “It is because there are often such people who irritate monkeys for no reason, which makes them irritable and attack people from time to time, which in turn makes monkeys seem bad.”