For many, bats are something out of a horror movie or nightmare, especially a human-sized bat hanging outside a house. Recently, a photo taken by Filipino netizens has attracted everyone's attention.
A human-sized bat is shown hanging upside down from the eaves, and it is believed that people who are afraid of bats may be unable to sleep through the night after reading this photo. But don't be afraid, it's actually a clever photography technique.
Although flying mammals can reach a wingspan of up to 5 feet 5 inches (1.5 meters), bats can only grow to about one foot (0.3 meters) tall. Although the giant golden-crowned fruit bat is much larger than the average British bat, it is certainly not "human-sized" in terms of height.
With some clever forced perspective photography (which allows people to "lift" buildings like the Leaning Tower of Pisa), bats may look much larger than they actually are.
After posting a picture on social media, netizen @alexjoestar622 wrote: "Remember when I told everyone about the Philippines having bats the size of humans? The post has now been liked more than 260,000 times and has attracted thousands of comments.
One netizen quickly pointed out the true size of the bat, saying, "I'm from the Philippines. I can attest to that, they have very large wingspans, but they're not that big, more or less like a medium-sized (slightly smaller) dog. They eat only fruit, especially guava. They are also really gentle.