This is the moment a cute video of a toddler playing in the leaves turned into a horror movie when a twig turns out to be a snake.

The short video clip shows the two-year-old reaching down at something that seems interesting among the pile of leaves, with his uncle commenting about what he is doing in the woodland in the city of Aksu in Xinjiang, lying at the northern edge of China’s Tarim Basin.

But he stopped filming and rushed over to pull the boy away and made him drop the snake after he picked it up with his bare hands and then looked over proudly as if to ask what was this strange thing that he had found.

Mr Wu, the uncle, said that he and his nephew had been looking for mushrooms and the last thing that he had expected was that he would be picking up a live snake.

The video prompted various reactions on Douyin, China’s TikTok, where it was shared on 20th April, with online commentators like ‘Silly Baby’ saying: “He is not afraid at all.”

And user ‘Feitian Big Naan Pancake’ said: “Baby, you scared your uncle to death.”

While the user ‘Wind Chimes Are Pleasant To The Ears’ said: “If it were a venomous snake, he would be dead.”