Khloe Kardashian denies she's a bully after criticising Chloe Grace Moretz

'I'm the last person to bully but have an animal instinct to protect and defend my family'

The feud between Khloe and Moretz is an offshoot of the protracted row between Taylor Swift and West (Cindy Ord/Getty Images)

Khloe Kardashian has denied claims she is a bully after tweeting an image of what she wrongly claimed was Chloe Grace Moretz in a bikini.

Khloe said she has an “animal instinct” to protect her family and insisted she is not the type to bully after being criticised for her response to the actress, 19, when the pair became embroiled in a Twitter spat over Kim Kardashian.

The row started after Moretz appeared to wade into Kim’s decision to leak a video of her husband, Kanye West, discussing the lyrics to the controversial song "Famous" with Taylor Swift on the phone. Moretz then vented her frustration at the triviality of celebrity clashes.

”Everyone in this industry needs to get their heads out of a hole and look around to realise what's ACTUALLY happening in the REAL world,” she tweeted. “Stop wasting your voice on something so petulant and unimportant.”

Khloe responded by posting an image of a girl with a part of her body exposed on the beach whom she claimed to be Moretz but it was not.

Moretz immediately replied to Khloe, explaining is was not in fact her: “Fact check: first photo is me filming my movie Neighbors 2, the second photo is some girl who was wrongfully photographed”.

“I'm the last person to bully but have an animal instinct to protect and defend my family,” Khloe tweeted after accusations of bullying surfaced. “Refrain from commenting on my family and OUR business (and I will do the same).”

In the video clip posted by Kim, West can be heard reading his lyrics about Swift from his new song and asking for her approval. However the clip does not include the specific line “I made that b**** famous.” Swift says she was unaware at the time the call was being recorded.

Swift has accused West of “character assassination” and strongly denied approving the line “I made that b**** famous”. “While I wanted to be supportive of Kanye on the phone call, you cannot ‘approve’ a song you haven’t heard,“ she said in a statement on Instagram. ”Being falsely painted as a liar when I was never given the full story or played any part of the song is character assassination“.

Representatives for Moretz and Khloe did not immediately respond to request for comment.