An old photo of a human-sized bat has resurfaced on social media, leaving internet users horrified.
The terrifying photo shows an enormous bat hanging from a wire outside a house. While it already went viral on Reddit a few years ago, the nightmare-inducing picture started gaining attention again after it was posted on Twitter by AlexJoestar622.
“Remember when I told y’all about the Philippines having human-sized bats? Yeah, this was what I was talking about,” he wrote.
Many people immediately called the picture fake but it is real.
With a little bit of perspective photography, the bats can appear much bigger than their size. Just imagine posing for a photo pretending to carry or push buildings such as the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
The giant golden-crowned flying fox, also known as the golden-capped fruit bat, can have a wingspan of up to 5.5 feet but its body grows to about a foot in height.
AlexJoestar622’s Twitter post received over 260,000 likes and gained thousands of comments, with one saying: “Heya, from the Philippines here. I can confirm this, they have a huuuuuge wingspan but the bodies are not really that big, more or less like the same body as a medium (bit smaller) sized dog.
“And yeah they only eat fruits, guavas most particularly. They’re really gentle too.”
Another wrote: “Beautiful creature, its a bat, not at all scary, people are misinformed about these lovely creatures, they eat fruit not humans!!”
A third said: “A bat of the size of a dog is really a huge bat. A wing-span of almost 6ft? Hopefully these bats stay away from me when walking outdoors…”
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