30 Crazy Things That Aren't The Size We Thought They Were

From fiddle-leaf fig trees that easily tower over the 10-foot mark to atlas moths that are unnervingly large, our perception of size clearly needs a reality check.

Luckily (or unlikely, if you suffer from megalophobia, the fear of large objects), the internet is always here to help. So sit back and buckle up, things are about to get weird.

The massive Perrine Coulee Falls in Twin Falls, Idaho.

"Where's the human?" asked a Reddit user.

We expressed the same sentiments until zooming into the photo and spotting the teeny-tiny people to the right of the gigantic waterfall.

Nature sure is spectacular...and a little scary.

This large scale Buddha statue in Thailand.

Ang Thong, Thailand is home to this towering statue commonly referred to as the Big Buddha.

According to Atlas Obscura, a digital magazine and travel company, the mesmerizing Buddha measures a whopping 92 meters in height and 63 meters in width.

But its true size is only put into perspective as what (from afar) appear to be teeny humans stood before the religious figure. A bench is even needed to reach the massive hand of the statue.

"That is one BIG Buddha!!!" writes Redditor aChildofChaos.

We couldn't agree more!

A heart is actually the size of two fists, not one.

Turns out we've been lied to all our lives. The heart isn't actually the same size as your fist. What a bummer!

As this 3D print of a heart suggests, the most hardworking muscle in the body is much larger than a person's hand. Confused by its sheer size? You're not alone.

One Redditor was seemingly just as baffled by the print. "That seems big, unless it was purposely scaled up, but it also seems misshapen," says user hesitantmaneatingcat.

This comment caused the original poster of the photo to explain that this 3D model was printed at a one-to-one ratio of the heart scan, confirming its accurately massive size.

Yup, a heart can really be that big!

We didn't even know a fiddle-leaf tree could grow to this height.

The person who came across the mammoth plant is quite the giant himself, measuring a towering six feet and six inches in height.

Yet the fiddle-leaf fig tree makes his tall stature seems tiny compared to its great leaves that extend to approximately 13 feet tall.

This lengthy guess was estimated by counting the planks on the wall behind the plant. How crafty!

This praying mantis was manifesting to stay as far, far away.

Is it even possible to look at a praying mantis and not immediately see Master Mantis from Kung Fu Panda? Okay, maybe just us.

We're not sure how big the fictional master of kung fu was, but he assumably wasn't as large as this insect.

According to National Geographic, the praying mantis can grow up to six inches long. Now if that fact isn't super unsettling, we don't know what is.

By the looks of it, this gigantic mantis resting on a person's palm has maxed out its full six-inch potential.

The longest-serving spacecraft 'Discovery' is truly astronomical.

Does anyone really know how large a spacecraft is?

The answer: certainly not. That is until you're stood beside it and realize you're a tiny speck compared to its mind-blowing size.

One family got to experience this firsthand when they visited the space shuttle 'Discovery' at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center located in Virginia.

A father snapped this photo of his five-year-old son standing in front of the massive spacecraft. Could a spacecraft get any more mesmerizing?

A monstrous Oreo pizza that screams sugar coma.

Whether you think this Oreo pizza is absolutely mouth-watering or the exact opposite, what we can't get past about this humongous dessert is the mere size of that slice.

Forget about how many bites it'll take to finish the piece, we're more curious as to how big the entire pizza was. And more so, how the heck it fit into an oven?!

This flightless bird with a lethal kick is dangerously large.

"Cassowaries, the deadliest bird in the world, can grow to [five to six] feet tall with some females reaching 6.6 ft in height," writes Reddit user enigmaticbloke.

And we just have one question: how can someone be so calm standing beside such a massive predator?

Especially when the flightless bird is capable of such a powerful (and potentially fatal) kick with its three-toed feet, which according to the San Diego Zoo, features "a dagger-like claw on the inner toe that is up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) long."

A harpy eagle's talons compared to a human hand is mortifying.

On the subject of very powerful — and equally terrifying — claws, check out how large a harpy eagle's talons can be.

According to the San Diego Zoo, the claw of one of these powerful birds can grow up to 5 inches long. To put this into perspective, that measurement far surpasses the claws of a grizzly bear.

We've said it once, and we'll say it again, that's a whole lot of nope for us.

This large bodyguard that's towering over others in the room.

"These people next to the Absolute unit of a Guard," writes RedditorNumber50, who posted the photo to Reddit.

We're not sure who these people are but clearly they must be important to require a bodyguard of that * ahem * stature.

President Biden and first lady Jill Biden tower over the Carters.

When this photo of Joe and Jill Biden visiting Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter was posted to Twitter back in April, it instantaneously went viral.

The picture didn't draw attention because of this monumental presidential meeting. Rather, it caused a stir due to the Bidens towering over the former president and first lady.

So what gives? Are Joe and Jill Biden massively tall humans? Or are Jimmy and Roslynn Carter just really tiny?

The answer is mostly neither. Instead, as the BBC reported, the bizarre size difference is likely due to the use of a wide lens angle. And more so, Jimmy Carter is leaning back in his chair and Joe Biden is kneeling quite a bit ahead of Rosalynn Carter.

All these factors put together created one strangely distorted photograph.

These gigantic "murder hornets" are the stuff of nightmares.

Speaking of photo distortion, we truly wish that the hornets in this photo looked enormously large because of a strange camera angle.

But unfortunately, there was no lens distortion. What you're looking at are very real, and thankfully deceased, Asian giant hornets.

Nicknamed "murder hornets," these terrifying insects that have the potential to devastate bee populations in North America can see a queen grow up to two inches long, reports the New York Times.

And if we're being honest, that's certainly two inches too big for our liking.

This King Kong of moths.

Horrified by what your eyes are witnessing? Yeah, same here.

The Redditor who posted the photo to the Internet explains that the creature resting on their arm is an atlas moth.

According to the user, the insect can have a maximum wingspan of a little over nine inches. If that's not a gigantic measurement for a moth, someone please tell us what is!

"Pretty sure that’s a bird. But thanks science," writes another Redditor who jumped into the moth conversation.

They expressed our exact sentiments perfectly.

We knew the humanoids from *Attack on Titan* were massive, but seeing one in person is a whole new level of scary.

In Yokohama, Japan stands a massive, and quite horrifying, inflatable man-eating humanoid from the popular manga series Attack on Titan.

According to TimeOut, the 27-foot figure is the manga's central character, Eren, in his Titan form.

The gigantic statue largely towers over Twitter user @jamiilie who stopped in front of the sinister titan to capture a picture.

A megalodon may be extinct but its fossil remnants are still unsettlingly.

Raise your hand if the first thing that came to mind when reading the word 'megalodon' was that horrifying shark movie with Jason Statham. Yeah, us too.

The film The Meg centers around the very really — and fortunately, very extinct — prehistoric shark.

As the picture suggests, these aquatic creatures that once ruled the oceans were massive in size. The Natural History Museum states that these gigantic fishes grew between 49 and 59 feet in length.

This is approximately three times longer than the biggest great white shark to have ever been recorded. Yup, that just sounds like a big nope from us.

Highway signs are terrifyingly humongous.

Yeah, we're just as perplexed at how massive freeway signs really are.

With nothing but a wide-open road and never-ending sky to compare these signs to, they've always somehow appeared to be of pretty average size.

That is until the green panels are pulled down for maintenance and their true size can actually be admired.

Hummingbird eggs are surprisingly small.

Who knew the eggs of a hummingbird could be so tiny.

The Redditor who posted the photo of the little nest certainly didn't. The eggs were so small that the user placed a quarter in their hand to show others just how minuscule the developing chicks were.

And naturally, others shared their astonishment of the micro nest, be it largely satirical.

"Those jelly beans look pretty yummy," writers Redditor matty-p-tatty.

Thanks to their comment, we can't see these eggs as being anything else than little jelly beans.

A sweet baby hummingbird is the size of a berry.

You were probably curious about what a baby hummingbird looks like out of its teeny-tiny shell.

Fortunately, Redditor 4reddityo snapped this photo of an adorable hummingbird pecking at a raspberry that's almost as large as the bird itself. We're totally swooning!

Dinosaurs became extinct for a *pretty clear* reason.

Okay, so we all knew dinosaurs were freakingly colossal. But seeing an Omeisaurus in comparison to a human is still quite a shocking sight.

Can you imagine how terrifying it would be if these long-necked herbivorous (or any dinosaur for that matter) still roamed the earth?

Actually, we retract that statement — we'd rather not have that scarring mental image in our heads for even a second longer.

Having a whale of a time.

We all know the blue whale is giant, but do we understand how giant? Spoiler alert, it’s enormous; just look at it compared to that fishing vessel.

Blue whales average 80-100 feet in length and weigh roughly 441,000 pounds. The largest blue whale recorded was over 110 feet long.

To help put this in perspective, their tongue weighs as much as an elephant, and there as long as three full-length school buses.

The cutest wild cat ever!

Meet the Rusty-spotted cat, one of the smallest members of the wild cat family. It’s commonly known as the “hummingbird of the cat family,” which is too adorable for words.

Located in India, Shi Lanka, and Nepal, the tiny feline is 14-19 inches in length (with another 6-12 inches of tail) and weighs only 2-3.5 pounds. Oh, and this may look like a kitten, but it’s actually a fully grown adult.

There are roughly 10,000 of these little guys frolicking around the wild today. Unfortunately, this makes it a vulnerable species, according to the IUCN.

They live in dry forests, scrub, and grasslands. Not much is known about their lifespan. One thing we know for certain is they are absolutely precious!

Wait, you're saying this thing can actually fly?

This plane looks like it eats other planes for breakfast. Seriously, how is it that this mammoth plane can even get airborne!

The Lockheed C-5 Galaxy is a military transport aircraft and is part of the United States Air Force. What’s amazing is this colossal aircraft had its first flight all the way back in 1968.

The plane is 246 feet in length with a whopping 223-foot wingspan, making it one of the largest military aircraft in the world. Did we mention it weighs 380,077 pounds? Whoa.

For those who thought only The Great Pyramids of Giza were big.

The Temple of Esna, also known as the Temple of Khnum, is big, very big.

Located in Egypt and dedicated to the ram-headed god Khnum. Construction started somewhere between 180-45 B.C. and was finished between 40-250 A.D. So we know what you’re thinking; that’s quite a long time. But they had a lot going on back then, and, you know, no power tools, cranes, electricity, you get the idea.

The remains of the temple consist of 24, 49-foot pillars of gargantuan proportion with stunning artwork and hieroglyphics. Moving the massive stones is one thing, but think about how long it took to decorate every, single, inch. By hand, no less.

What on Earth are those?

These plants look as though they’d be found on an alien planet in a sci-fi movie. However, they’re actually found here on the blue marble we call home.

So what are they? They’re called Dendrosenecio kilimanjari and are part of the giant groundsel family.

These particular ones can only be found on Mount Kilimanjaro (hence the name). They’ve been around for a million years and are 20-30 feet in height.

"Solar power station in Chile with one cell for scale."

The Cerro Dominador Solar Plant is located in the Antofagasta Region of Chile and is part of the country’s pledge towards sustainable energy.

According to Reddit user cajunjoel, it currently generates 100 megawatts of energy a day and, when it’s complete, will produce 210 megawatts daily. That equates to roughly 950 gigawatt-hours.

To help put this in perspective, one gigawatt-hour represents one billion watt-hours. A standard lightbulb needs 60 watts per hour of use. In this case, that’s a lot of lightbulbs being powered by the sun.

And look at the size of the solar panels themselves when compared to the workers underneath! It also kind of looks like the villain's layer in a James Bond movie, which is cool, too.

Who needs a wine bottle that big?

‘I only had one bottle,’ are famous last words for anyone who’s ever encountered a Melchizedek-sized bottle of wine.

These famously large bottles can hold almost 1015 ounces, enough for a substantial gathering of wine enthusiasts. That would be about 40 bottles of wine if you were wondering.

The bottles are made mainly for collectors, and even then, are seldom made. Not surprising when you realize that the standard bottle of wine is 25 ounces.

All anglerfishes, no matter their size, are absolutely horrifying.

Fortunately, an anglerfish doesn't actually grow this huge.

As Redditor Aloft_Potato explains, this model of the aquatic animal is realistically not to scale.

"The largest anglerfish grow to about 2.5ft [or] 76cm," they add.

We whipped out our measuring tape to get a true sense of just how large two and a half feet is. Here's our conclusion: it's still terrifyingly big!

A teeny, tiny, seashell.

Who knew shells could even get that small! Just think of the little crustacean that called it home. I wonder what the realtor said to make the sale. ‘Sure, it’s a small space, but with the right interior decorating and lots of natural light, you won’t even notice you’re in every room at the same time!’

By the looks of this little thing, it’s a tulip banded shell, which may have been home to a tiny sea snail, possibly Cinctura lilium. These snails can be found off the coast of North and South Carolina, Texas, Florida, the Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico.

Good luck finding more of these to make that miniature seashell neckless you’ve been planning.

Get that thing away from me!

The Tasmanian giant crab is truly something of nightmares. Imagine casually swimming in the ocean and coming across one of these armoured monsters!

Luckily, they’re only found on the ocean floor at depths of 66-2,690 feet off the coast of Southern Australia. Far from an accidental encounter with an unsuspecting swimmer. Thank goodness.

The crabs have a width of 18 inches and weigh around 39 pounds.

Can we all take a moment to look at the size of that menacing claw? Yeah, we’ll leave them alone if they leave us alone.

The stones of Stonehenge.

Chances are, most of us are familiar with the historical marvel that is Stonehenge. But have you ever really thought about how tremendously big those stones are?

Each stone is around 13 feet by 7 feet wide and weighs anywhere from 35 to 40 tonnes. The smaller stones, known as bluestones, are about 3 tonnes. The largest stone weighs almost half as much as your average 1,600 square foot single-story house (100 tons).

When you realize that the prehistoric monument is believed to have been built in 3000 BC and that those stones had to be somehow lifted, it’s astonishing.

Filed Under: