Animal pictures are always well received, and the more unusual the better. But it's sad that the animals are almost forced to take some seemingly great photos.

As an example, here is an image that shows two praying mantises seemingly dancing flamenco: In August 2014, photographer Hasan Baglar shared (archived version of the image) . His description of it:

“This is normal behavior for praying mantises. They show such respect. When they are frightened, they open their wings, raise their arms and appear to smile. They look like dancers.”

A little later, Baglar submitted the photo to National Geographic . The picture wasn't shortlisted, but can be found on many sites ! It should be noted that he tagged the image on National Geographic with the keywords “Creativity” and “Story”:

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Screenshot: mimikama.org

The original image's metadata on flickr shows that the image was taken in 2014 and modified in 2015:

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Screenshot: mimikama.org

This alone does not prove manipulation, but in several checks we were able to detect massive changes in the image, at least in the wing area:

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Screenshot: mimikama.org

The colleagues from “ Hoax or Fact ” also took a closer look at the image and were able to determine that when the saturation of the image was increased, there were color fragments around the arms and legs, indicating that something had been “painted over” there.

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Such manipulations are common!

Frogs that hold flowers and leaves as “umbrellas” or ride on a snake: These may look cute, but both contradict the nature of the animals. Frogs depend on moisture, so they certainly don't need an umbrella, and they certainly wouldn't ride in a group on a reptile that could eat them in the next second.

For example, here you can see that one such photo has been manipulated with threads or wires to hold the frogs in place:

In the famous photo of the two praying mantises you can also see linear fragments that indicate manipulation using threads or wires:

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Screenshot: mimikama.org

The photos of various frogs riding large beetles like rodeo riders were also exposed as fake .
Photographer Yan Hidayat, whose Instagram account features many such photos, also openly admits that he bought the animals in Jakarta (except the snails he found in his garden) and staged the photos.

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But threads aren't the only tricks used:
An award-winning picture by the Brazilian photographer Marcio Cabral, which shows an anteater at a termite mound at night, turned out to be fake when it was noticed that the anteater looks and poses exactly like the stuffed anteater at the entrance to the national park near which the photo was taken.

And so there are (unfortunately) many other “cute” photos that ultimately turn out to be fake , often to the dismay of the animals.

Conclusion

To relax, people like to look at cute animal photos on the Internet. But unfortunately there are fakes hiding there too, and if an animal picture just looks too unusual, you have to ask yourself whether the frog really wanted to ride a crocodile or a snake or whether the praying mantises really “dance”.

Article image: Shutterstock / By natfu


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )