Videos of toddler Arat Hosseini show him swinging from a trapeze at nine months old and performing backflips before his second birthday.

The Iranian youngster, who turns two later this month, has taken social media by storm with his crazy stunts and impressive flexibility and has more than 18,000 followers on Instagram.

Arat's parents Mohamad and Fatemeh, who live in Babol in the Mazandaran Province, say their son has had no professional training and practices for just 10 to 20 minutes daily.

Mohamad said: "One day when I returned home from work and put my finger in Arat's hand, he got up slowly and, gripping my finger very tightly, pulled his legs off the ground.

"At that time I noticed the strength and power Arat had and was very surprised. "Arat's favourite trick is performing a backwards somersault.

"He is very playful and does about 20 minutes of exercise a day.

All the videos on our Instagram page show the first or second time he has performed a trick. "Usually he can do it easily after 10 minutes of practise."

Arat has perfected yoga poses such as balancing splits as well as more traditional gymnastic moves like backwards walkovers and somersaults.