A bizarre image has emerged which originally lead people to believe that an alien toad had flown down to earth from the outer regions of space, but instead was simply a picture of a cane toad eating a bat.
Phil Torres, a naturalist who is based in Peru, brought the bizarre image to the attention of his followers thanks his blog post.
Torres noted that the photo was taken by Yufani Olaya, a park ranger, at Cerros de Amotape National Park, a remote guard station in the country.
Mr Olaya believes that the picture shows a ground-dwelling toad eating a bat after it captured the bat in its mouth. Torres believes that this is the first photo to show this bizarre meal, but he did write that cane toads are “notoriously opportunistic feeders.”
Mr Olaya went on to add that the bat was flying too close to the floor as it attempted to gorge on insects. Olaya told blog.perunature.com, “Out of nowhere the bat just flew directly into the mouth of the toad, which almost seemed to be sitting with it mouth wide open.”
The toad was unable to digest the bat though, and after attempting to eat the winged beast, he finally spat it out. Olaya added that he originally thought the animal was dead, but he confirmed that the bat managed to recover and then fly away.
Of course, as the image made its way across the Internet, bloggers and users started to use various social networking sites to speculate on the creature’s origin without reading the full story.
Twitter responses included:
Someone in art class predicted the #BatToad . http://t.co/St9jsZnjyi @upulie
— Phil Torres (@phil_torres) September 23, 2013
oh wow, alien frog http://t.co/JtmqgIc3LB
— Senator Corley (@TheWontonNupe) September 23, 2013
LOL – frog catches bat!! This is awesome!! spoiler alert: The bat lives on… http://t.co/ILixa2pZ3l
— Patricia Corcoran (@plife50) September 24, 2013
You can check out the full image below:
[Image via Yufani Olaya/ PeruNature]
