THIS is the shocking moment a drunk man’s arm was savaged by a lion after he tried to stroke the big cat through the bars of its cage.

Smartphone footage caught the incident on camera at the Rosy Walther Zoo in Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras.

The video begins with the man waving his arm through the bars of the cage at the lion, which is sitting on a rock a few meters away. Eventually, he attracts the interest of the lion, which jumps up and bounds over towards him as the man whips his arms away.

A woman can be heard in the background saying in Spanish: “It’s moving, it’s moving,” before adding to the man: “You’re crazy!”

But as the lion walks past him, he tries to pet the beast on its back as his friends laugh at his antics. But then the big cat whips around and grabs the man’s arm in its powerful jaws as the same woman cries: “Oh no!”

Eyewitnesses said that the man appeared to be under the influence of alcohol from the way he was acting.

He had reportedly gone into the zoo with a group of friends and went right up close to the lion’s cage without zookeepers spotting him.(SD-Agencies)