The mother rat runs up from behind the snake and furiously attacks the reptile until it drops the baby rodent.
The mother chased the snake into the grass before returning for her baby, which initially appeared motionless but started to walk again when its mother returned.
"Rats can be pretty ferocious, they are predators themselves and can kill things," Dana Krempels, a biologist who studies small mammals at the University of Miami, told National Geographic.
She said the mother rat had higher stakes in the encounter than the snake, which appeared to be a variety of non-venomous racer snake.
"The mama had a lot more to lose than the snake did," Krempels said. "Half of her genes were wandering away, and all he's going to lose is his lunch."
