Pictures of a bat that looks like a person are going viral. But is it really real?

A bat the size of a person hanging outside their house gives a lot of people nightmares.

People who are scared of monsters that hang from the ceiling might have a sleepless night after seeing this picture. Don’t worry, though; not everything is what it seems to be.

The picture was taken in the Philippines. It looks like a “human-sized” nightmare is hanging from a roof, but it’s just a clever camera trick.

In the picture, you can see a big golden-crowned flying fox, which is a fruit-eating bat that lives in the Asian mountain range.

Flying mammals can have wingspans of up to 5ft5in, which is a lot bigger than the average height of a woman in the UK. Bats, on the other hand, are only about a foot tall.

A normal UK bat has wingspan less than that of a sparrow, so the huge golden-crowned flying fox is much bigger than that. However, it is not “human-sized” in terms of height.

But with good forced perspective photography, like the kind used to “prop up” the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the bats could look a lot bigger than they really are, like in this picture.

That didn’t stop people from freaking out when @AlexJoestar622 posted the picture on Twitter and said, “Remember when I warned you about the Philippines having bats the size of people?” This is what I meant by “yes.”

There have been hundreds of comments and more than 260,000 likes on the post.

But someone on Twitter was quick to point out how big the bat really was, writing, “Heya, from the Philippines here.” I can tell that they have huge wings, but their bodies are about the size of a medium-sized dog, or a little smaller.

“And all they eat are fruits, mostly guavas.” Also, they’re very gentle.