A skin-crawling video showing a creature emerging from the corpse of a praying mantis is disturbing viewers who suggest the only way to deal with the situation is "a flamethrower".

The clip which has gone viral is like something out of a horror movie as those filming find the dead body of a praying mantis and notice something appears to be moving around inside.

As a knife is pressed on the back of the insect, three small tentacle-like shoots slowly wriggle their way out of the head.

The slithering creatures continue to emerge as the video rolls on, getting longer and longer until they are many times the length of the host they had been living inside.

One explained that they are horsehair worms, saying they are "pretty common parasites in insects".

Another said: "They do not always kill the host. They'll highjack the brain and make the insect lust for water, then the insect goes to water and the worms hop out there to continue the cycle. The bug can still be alive at this point depending on which insides the worms ate."

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