A video of terrified new York subway riders standing on chairs and screaming to avoid a rat on their train carriage has gone viral.

The video, posted to YouTube by Jinais Ponnampadikkal Kader has been watched over 800,000 times in just a couple of days, with people amused at the reactions of the commuters who jumped onto their seats screaming and crying as the rat scurried about the carriage trying to keep out of sight.

Kader describes the video as:

A usually boring Monday morning commute to work at Brooklyn was stirred up by this little guy. He joined us at the Fulton street station on the A train going downtown. Someone getting off the train was screaming “RAT on the train!”. But by the time everyone realized what was happening, the doors closed and the train entered the tunnel. We were stuck with him till the other end.