Have you ever been surfing the web when you come across an insane image? It looks absolutely incredible but you can't quite believe it.

The South Texas Hunting Association posted the photo to Facebook about a year ago of Markcuz Rangel holding the animal he said weighs 13 pounds. I for one, have never, EVER seen anything like it.

I couldn't decide if it was real or not, so I put on my detective cap and got to work.

Here is what I learned:

When my friends husband shared this insane post on his Facebook I couldn't believe my eyes. I've seen a lot of bullfrogs in my day. But none this size. The viral images in question were shared by the South Texas Hunting Association Facebook page (below) along with the caption:

"Wanted to share a monster bullfrog we got yesterday afternoon at one of our fishing ponds in South Texas ranch located in Batesville tx 13lb [5.8 kilograms] monster frog!!!"

Since it was originally uploaded it has been shared over 320,000 times and has 43,000+ comments, most of which say something like "WOW" or "Is that real?"

So I did some research.

Now according to Herps of Texas, the largest frog species in the US reaches between 3.5 to 6 inches and I wasn't the only one who thought it was incredible. This photo was drawing a lot of skepticism. I mean geez, it looks like the frog is nearly as big as Rangel. I'm glad I'm not the only one who looked twice.

I guess that was my next question: Could this frog really be as large as it appears?

Steve Lightfoot, official spokesman for the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department, didn't think so.

"It's not as bigly as it appears, [It's an] optical illusion created by extending the frog toward the camera -- similar to what you see with fishermen holding up fish to make them appear larger. Still a big bullfrog, though." he told the Houston Chronicle. "Still a big bullfrog, though."

So there you have it - the photo is real, but the angle is misleading. Is this what is happening in some of these pictures? The ones that seem absolutely unreal but my eyes can see it?  What is this called?

What is forced perspective?

What's happening in some of these pictures is actually what I now know is called "forced perspective".

Forced perspective is a technique which uses optical illusion to make an object appear farther away, closer, larger or smaller than it actually is. It manipulates our eyes perception through the use of scaled objects and the correlation between them and the vantage point of the spectator or camera.

Make sense? I guess my understanding is that the camera is forcing my eyes to see something that might not be quite so spectacular if I saw the whole photo.

Just for fun - I included a few more examples of forced perspective, now we know - question what you see on the internet, not everything is quite what it seems!