Old Video of Cheetahs Meowing Falsely Linked to Ones Brought to Madhya Pradesh

This video dates back to 2021 and shows two cheetah brothers from Minnesota's Wildcat Sanctuary.

Fact-Check: The claim links this old video to the cheetahs released in Kuno National Park, Madhya Pradesh. 

(Photo: The Quint)

A video of a cheetah sitting inside a cage and meowing was shared by Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Twitter, linking it to the eight cheetahs brought to Madhya Pradesh's Kuno National Park from Namibia.

The cheetahs were released into the wild by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 17 September.

However, this video is old. We found the same video was shared on YouTube on 29 November 2021 by 'The Wildcat Sanctuary.' The title stated that it showed two cheetah brothers, Kitu and Lavani.

The sanctuary's website mentioned that they were brought to Minnesota in the United States in April 2021. A user on Reddit had also shared this video ten months back.

CLAIM

Yadav tweeted the video and wrote, "सबको इंतज़ार था दहाड़ का… पर ये तो निकला बिल्ली मौसी के परिवार का."

[Translation: Everyone was waiting for the roar, but it turned out to be the cat's family.]

The Maharashtra Congress Seva Dal also shared this video by linking it to the cheetahs that came to Kuno National Park.

An archive of the post can be seen here.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

The video was also shared on a verified channel named OTV News on Daily Motion with the same claim.

Similar claims can be seen here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We noticed the logo of a Hindi-language newspaper Punjab Kesari on the top-right corner of the video.

The logo of Punjab Kesari.

(Source: The Quint)

We found an article by Punjab Kesari which stated that this video of two cheetahs meowing is going viral. However, it did not state that the video is a recent one from Kuno National Park.

Next, we divided the video into multiple key frames and ran a Google reverse image search on some of them.

This led us to a YouTube video uploaded by 'The Wildcat Sanctuary' on 24 November 2021.

The first 15 seconds of this video showed the part which is going viral.

The video's description read that the video shows two cheetah brothers, Kitu and Lavani.

Taking a cue from this, we performed a keyword search using the cheetahs' names and came across a 59-second-long video on Reddit which showed the same cheetahs.

The video was uploaded 10 months ago.

We also checked the website of The Wildcat Sanctuary located in Sandstone, Minnesota, and came across a page dedicated to the cheetahs from the sanctuary.

It stated that the cheetah brothers, Kitu and Lavani, were brought to the sanctuary in April 2021 when they were 11 years old. Kitu can be easily identified since the left side of his mouth curls up.

We could not verify when the video was shot but it is clear that it is an old video and is being falsely linked to the cheetahs brought to Madhya Pradesh's Kuno National Park from Namibia.

(The story was first published on Quint Hindi on 18 September.)

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