2020 has become such a write-off of course giant bats are here to make our lives that much more terrifying. While your opinion of bats was already low due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re here to knock it down a peg or two. Introducing: giant, human-sized bats. Oh, how we wish we were joking.
We spoke about COVID-19 on this episode of It’s Been A Big Day For…
Recently, an image uploaded by Twitter user @AlexJoestar622 went viral for terrifying the Internet to its literal core. Captioned, “Remember when I told y’all about the Philippines having human-sized bats? Yeah, this was what I was talking about,” he uploaded images of the massive bat.
Can you just imagine spotting one of these flying around your house in the middle of the night? Big yikes.
Safe to say, the Internet was not handling this information well at all.
The bat in the photo is dubbed the ‘giant golden-crowned flying fox’ (which sounds about right). It’s native to the Philippines and thank God for that because we don’t know how we would handle seeing one of these around our neck of the woods.
While this is one of the largest bat species in the world, it wouldn’t be completely correct to label it as “human-sized.” This specific species can grow to have a wingspan of 5.5 feet (so, a shortish person) but the actual height of it is approximately a foot. In fact, the longest documented forearm of any bat is 8.5 inches. Regardless, it’s still terrifying.
So while this bat may look bigger in the photo because of the perspective, ultimately this is a real bat and that’s enough to scare the living shit out of us. We have to wonder how big they would be in real life, but we certainly hope that we never have to experience a run in.
Due to deforestation and poaching, the giant golden-crowned flying fox is becoming an endangered species.
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