New York, New York - New Yorkers have seen it all – they won't even bat an eyelid when a giant rat in a suit boards the subway.

Buddy the Rat is not a real rodent of course. He is a character created 11 years ago by performance artist Jonothon Lyons, who has been trying – and failing – to shock commuters ever since.

In fact, judging by the stony-faced reactions of the locals, the most reliable emotion Lyons' act provokes is boredom.

In a city with a world-famous rat problem, the sight of gigantic vermin with foot-long tails scurrying around on public transport is all too real for this parody to have much impact.

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But that's exactly what Lyons likes. "Most New Yorkers are totally indifferent," he told the New York Post enthusiastically. Only in the rarest of cases does he get a smile, or even manage to cause a fright.

But while subway riders remain stubbornly unimpressed, Buddy the Rat has plenty of fans on the internet.

"Oh NYC is dead? Explain this," Alison Williams wrote in a tweet that shared a video of Buddy's antics. And while the passengers in the clip barely look up from their phones, thousands of users found the whole thing hilarious.

Within a few hours, the video got almost four million views.

Jonothon Lyons also has his own TikTok account, where his character makes regular appearances, always wearing a neat suit and gloves.

The costume is proving especially useful during the coronavirus pandemic – it turns out social distancing takes care of itself when you look like an oversized rat.

"I don’t have to worry about people staying 6 feet away from me," he told the New York Post. He does, however, take health and safety regulations seriously and always wears a proper face mask underneath his rat head.