'Selfie rat' crawls onto man's phone to snap a picture on New York subway platform

The rodent was captured sneaking up on the unsuspecting, sleeping passenger - who was woken by the camera flash

The rat's 'selfie' on the unsuspecting man's phone (YouTube)

A New York subway rat has become the latest animal to apparently take a selfie on an unsuspecting person's phone.

The rodent was spotted crawling across a sleeping man on the platform at the President Street subway station in Crown Heights.

Another passenger on the platform filmed the rat climbing onto the snoozing stranger’s lap and managing to take a close-up photo of itself before the phone’s owner awoke.

After being woken by the flash, the shocked man tried to brush the rat off his lap and then dropped his phone twice while trying to get away.

He later found the selfies in his phone’s photo library and showed them to the man filming him.

The animal is not the first rodent in New York City to find unlikely internet stardom after a rat - dubbed pizza rat - was filmed determinedly tugging a slice of pizza down a flight of stairs in September.