A viral video of a man resuscitating a motionless squirrel has won praise for the rodent's rescuers.

A video clip of the act made its rounds on social media earlier this week, showing the squirrel lying on its back on a motorcycle seat.

In the video, a man uses his finger to gently pump the squirrel's chest and positions it so that its mouth is open and tries to blow air into it. It does not respond at first, remaining stiff.

However, at around the 1min 20sec mark, the squirrel can be seen taking some rapid breaths.

It soon struggles to get to its feet and leaps off the motorcycle, where another man pets it. It later scampers away.

The men were reportedly from Cartagena, a city in Colombia, South America.

The squirrel incident is the second viral one in recent weeks. Late last month, a university student in Michigan was praised after she rescued a squirrel from drowning.

Natalie Belsito told student newspaper Central Michigan Life that she performed cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on the creature, remembering tips from an episode of American sitcom The Office.

"It was a super cool feeling to know that I saved an innocent life," Ms Belsito told NBC news. "I watched a lot of Animal Planet as a kid, but for the CPR part (it) was literally all from that episode in The Office."

She was referring to an episode called Stress Relief in season five of the series, where the staff from fictional company Dunder Mifflin learned that a good tip for CPR was to do chest compressions to the beat of the song Stayin' Alive.