Bikini girl catches flying snake with ninja reflexes

Seconds after chatting with a friend, a woman sunbathing in South Africa catches a striking cobra which had launched itself and was mid-air.

The girl, sitting by a lake in Robertson, Western Cape, is captured on video grabbing the snake with bare hands as it approaches her.

But the amazing feat has been outed as a staged prank by some eagle-eye viewers of the YouTube clip, who have spotted a shadow from a fishing rod reeling in the snake, although the wire does not show up on camera.

The anonymous prankster has since admitted the gag, and said it was done to scare his sister, who was not in on the gag – however she reacted much differently than he expected, the Daily Mail Australia reported.

“It was a prank on my sister. Yes it was pulled via fishing rod with fluorocarbon line,” the prankster said.

“My brother and I was (sic) trying to scare my sister but it seems that she was prepared, seeming that I grew up catching snakes along that river since I was just a boy and she would sometimes join me,” he told the Daily Mail.

“She did not handle it as we expected her to, very much impressed!”