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

An eyewitness with a smartphone caught the incident on camera at the Rosy Walther Zoo in Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras.

The footage begins with the man waving his arm through the bars of the cage at the lion which is lying on a rock a few metres 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: “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 big cat 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!”

The witness filming the action turns away in shock but the man is later filmed in a car with his badly injured arm resting on the open side window.

Several deep teeth marks can be seen on his blood-splattered arm which does not appear to have received any medical attention. However, local media reports the car took him to a local hospital.

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.