A photograph of a huge bat hanging upside down from a ceiling has been circulating online recently.

An old photo of a huge bat in the Philippines has resurfaced on Twitter, surprising users. The terrifying image appears to depict a “human-sized” bat dangling from a wire outside a building. Although it went viral on Reddit in 2018, the photo resurfaced last month when Twitter user ‘@AlexJoestar622’ shared it on the microblogging platform.

“Remember when I told you the Philippines had human-sized bats? Yes, this is what I was talking about,” the Twitter user wrote as he shared the image.

On Twitter, the image has received thousands of likes and hundreds of shocking comments. While many people found it terrifying, others questioned its authenticity.

The image, however, is not actually fake.

While there is some debate over the species of bat photographed, the general consensus is that the image shows an enormous golden-crowned flying fox. This species of megabat, also known as the golden-headed fruit bat, is only found in the Philippines.

The giant golden-crowned flying fox has a wingspan of up to 5.5 feet, but only grows to a foot tall. This makes the fruit bat larger than other bats, but not human-sized, as claimed in the viral tweet.

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According to the Daily Mail, a doctored photograph was used to make the bat appear larger than it is. The image is an example of forced perspective photography, which uses optical illusion to make objects appear larger, smaller, closer, or farther than they really are. Forced perspective photography includes images of tourists ‘handling’ the Taj Mahal or the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The Reddit user even posted another photo from a different angle of the bat yawning as it woke up from its daytime sleep; Flying foxes are typically nocturnal or crepuscular.

A Twitter user, who said he was from the Philippines, confirmed that these bats are actually not human-sized. “I can confirm this, they have a large wingspan, but the bodies are not really that big, about the same body as a medium-sized dog (slightly smaller),” he wrote, adding that these bats are “really Gentiles.” ”