People can't actually believe this photo of a 'human-sized bat' is real

A "human-sized bat" has gone viral on Twitter and people can't quite believe that it's a genuine photograph.

Twitter user @AlexJoestar622 shared a picture of what he referred to as a "human-sized bat", writing: "Remember when I told y'all about the Philippines having human-sized bats? Yeah, this was what I was talking about."

The bat featured in the image is believed to be the giant golden-crowned flying fox, which is sadly endangered because of habitat destruction and poaching, per Science Alert.

According to Snopes, the photo "truly depicts an animal that exists in the real world" - although the publication adds that it was unable to "positively identify the species of bat shown".

While the creature in the widely-shared photo has been referred to as a giant golden-crowned flying fox online - it might well be another species of megabat such as the large flying fox, per Snopes.

The tweet, for obvious reasons, quickly went viral, and at the time of writing, it has received over 63.1K retweets, 43.6K quote tweets, and 253.5K likes.

Some people couldn't believe the bat was real and that the picture hadn't been photoshopped:

Another Twitter user suggested that the bat isn't as scary as its mammoth size suggests, writing: "Yes they're found in that area and a lot of places work on the preservation of their habitats they're very very good calm and sweet bois and grls [sic]."

A different user wrote: "Holy hell I would be terrified if I saw one of those irl. Don't get me wrong... I love bats, this is just so wild a concept that it's not registering in my brain and I'd be convinced I was seeing a demon or smthn [sic]."

Meanwhile, a final user said that the picture should be seen in context, writing: "the pic is a little bit of forced perspective. While their wingspan be up to 5’7”, they only grow to about 2 feet tall tops. its like a flying fruit eating racoon [sic]."

On the subject of forced perspective, another famous example is the Lord of the Rings trilogy, where, as Screenrant reports, the technique was cleverly used to make the hobbits seem significantly smaller than everyone else - like Gandalf!

As for the bats themselves, if you want to catch a glimpse of one, you will most likely have to travel to The Philippines, which is where they are almost exclusively found, Science Alert reports.

Featured image credit: Alamy / Rolf Nussbaumer Photography