That's a Morphed Photo of an Elephant Walking With a Cub & Lioness

The morphed image was tweeted in 2018 on the occasion of April Fool's Day and has been viral ever since.

A morphed image of an elephant carrying a cub and walking along with a lioness is being shared with a false narrative.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A morphed image of an elephant holding a cub and walking alongside a lioness is being shared to claim that the cub was facing difficulty in walking due to excessive heat. The elephant then helped the cub and carried it to a water source, the claim added.

However, we found that the viral image has been manufactured by juxtaposing three different photos of the three animals and that it was shared as an April Fool's joke in 2018.

CLAIM

The claim along with the image reads: "A Lioness and her Cub were crossing Savannah (Treeless Plain) but the heat was excessive and the cub had great difficulty in walking so elephant carried it to water while its mother walking beside. If we call them Wild Animals, what would you call the Humans who spread HATRED? (sic)."

You can view the archived version here.

The image has been doing the round on social media since 2018 and the archived version of the posts can be viewed here, here and here.

Screenshot of the viral claim.

The Quint received a claim made in the viral image on its WhatsApp tipline as well.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We separated the three elements of the photo and then performed reverse image searches on each one of them with relevant keywords. Let's look at the results one by one.

1. ELEPHANT'S PHOTO IS FROM 2005

We came across the image of the elephant uploaded on Wikimedia Commons' website and the description mentioned that it was taken at the Kruger National Park, South Africa. The image dates back to 20 August 2005.

The original image, uploaded on Wikimedia Commons, does not show a cub and lioness.

The image is just the same as the viral image.

Left: Viral image. Right: Image from 2005.

2. LIONESS' PHOTO IS FROM 2012

We traced the image of the lioness back to 2012 on a blog published on a website called 'Londolozi.' The description mentioned that the image was captured a month before the publishing of the article in May 2012.

The original image could be traced back to 2012.

Here's a comparison of the viral image with the one uploaded in 2012.

Left: Viral image. Right: Image from 2012.

Further, in 2018, fact-checking website Snopes had found out that the image of the cub had been captured at the Werribee Open Range Zoo in Australia.

Left: Viral image. Right: Original image.

IMAGE SHARED ON APRIL FOOL'S DAY IN 2018

On 1 April 2018, Twitter account 'Kruger Sightings' had shared the image with a description similar to that of the viral claim. On carefully looking at the tweet we noticed a line: 'Tinged by Sloof Lirpa'.

These words are actually 'April fools' written in reverse order.

Twitter account 'Kruger Sightings' had shared the viral image in April 2018.

Further, Nadav Ossendryver, founder of Kruger Sightings, had tweeted on 2 April 2018 on how they made the April Fool's joke go viral.

The owner of Kruger Sightings had stated how they made the image go viral.

Clearly, a morphed image of an elephant carrying a cub was shared with a false narrative.

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