A woman who travelled to Bali, Indonesia is lucky to be alive after a video went viral of her unwittingly cradling one of the world’s deadliest animals.

Kaylin Phillips shared the video on her TikTok account, where it racked up millions of views and thousands of comments as shocked viewers were amazed at her narrow escape.

In the video, Phillip wrote text explaining that she was ‘’unknowingly’’ at the time holding the tiny but deadly venomous animal, which can be seen crawling over the palms of her hands as she stands in shallow water.

Phillips posted the caption: “called my Dad crying 3 hours later in Bali”, suggesting she unaware just how lucky she was until later.

In the comments, Phillips continued to amaze shocked user as she posted she had “held two in the same day”and that she and her friends had “tried to feed them oranges and played with them for a solid twenty minutes”.

According to Ocean Conservancy, there are four species of blue-ringed octopus all of which live in the western Pacific and Indian oceans.

They can be found in the sandy bottoms of shallow rockpools and reefs or hiding in crevices in the rocks. 

Living up to its name’s sake, if it feels threatened, tiny bright blue rings appear all over its body to warn off predators – as seen in Phillips’ video. If that doesn’t work, its bite contains venom which is “1,000 times more powerful than cyanide and this golf-ball sized powerhouse packs enough venom to kill 26 humans within minutes”.

CNET lists the blue-ringed octopus as the third most venomous creature in the world behind the Inland Taipan and the box jellyfish. Watch the video here