A nursery school pupil had to abandon her spaghetti and meatballs fancy dress costume after her hungry classmates found it so convincing they tried to eat it.

Little Olivia Colombiano – just one year and 10 months old – had arrived for the Children’s Day event on 10th October in a realistic-looking costume designed by her mother.

But the meatballs proved so mouth-wateringly tempting that other children tried to eat them, according to local media in Volta Redonda, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Teachers persuaded Olivia to change out of the costume when they noticed several of the Styrofoam meatballs had tooth marks on them.

The bizarre story was shared on Twitter by Olivia’s aunt, named as Eduarda Colombiano, with it reportedly going viral on 12th October.

She said: “Today is children’s week, the kids in ballerina, princess, fairy, superhero, football player and my niece in pasta with meatballs, and she just loved every second with the costume.”

At the time of writing, Olivia’s aunt’s post had nearly 150,000 likes and thousands of retweets.

Olivia’s mother, who is reportedly a dentist named as Isabela Leite, told local media: “Here, we always do different things, try to escape the normal, the conventional.

“On her birthday, for example, I didn’t want beats, so we always created different things.

“Besides, I really like making things by hand, I’ve always made my costumes and it wouldn’t be different for her.”