Harley Neville is a Kiwi who shaved one half of his body and ended up on The Ellen DeGeneres Show

An extremely hairy New Zealander has landed himself on The Ellen DeGeneres Show after a picture of him went viral.

A few years ago Harley Neville thought it would be a funny to shave one side of his body completely.

"It was a funny idea I thought of - to shave something into my ridiculously hairy body," he said.

Taking a photo of his "hair art" and uploading it to social media, Neville watched as it quickly went viral.

The other day he was minding his own business at work when he received a message from someone claiming to be from the Ellen show.

"I took it with a grain of salt and thought 'oh you're from the Ellen show you reckon'.

"But it turned out to be legitimate because one day later it's been seen by a lot of people," he said.

The photo shared on Ellen was different to the original, and he explained someone took the photo and mirrored it to make it look as though he had a crazy "snail-trail".

"Somebody took it and mirrored the image to make it appear to be a snail trail.

"So if you look closely you can tell it's a mirrored image but somehow the mirrored image went bigger than the original," he said.

Neville said that the mirrored image had made it to website BuzzFeed where it was quite popular.

Most people find the photo pretty funny he said, with a particular interest among gay men who are attracted to hairy men.

"A lot of women think its yuck, gay men interested in 'bears' love it - they're all over it.

"I think most people just think its funny," he said.

Neville said since he featured on the show he and the photo have blown up online making it difficult to keep up with the notifications.

He told the Herald he had plans for the future but said for the moment he would enjoy in his newfound fame.