Animated Video of a 'Whale' Destroying Ship In an Ocean Goes Viral as Real

This is not a real video but an animated video.

A video showing a large marine animal attacking and destroying a ship in the middle of a water body is going viral on social media with a claim that this is a real incident that happened in Canada.

• The video is shot from a helicopter, which later falls down after a huge part of the ship hits it.

• The end of the clip shows a shark approaching.

(Archives of similar claims can be seen here, here and here.)

We also received a query about this video on our WhatsApp tipline.

Is this incident real?: No, this is an animated clip created by a digital creator, Alexey Patrev.

How did we find out?: We divided the video into multiple keyframes and ran a reverse image search on some of them.

• This led us to YouTube short, uploaded by a channel named 'Aleksey__n'.

• The short was uploaded on 9 March and the caption read 'Meg', referring to one of the biggest, now extinct, sharks Megalodon.

• From the description of the video, we found his Instagram page, which carried the same viral video.

• The bio read 'digital creator' and carried several such animated videos.

• The caption under the video uploaded on Instagram stated that this is animation.

• The page carried other similar animated videos of whale which can be seen here and here.

• We also discovered that he shared the same video on his Twitter account.

• The tweet carried hashtags around animation, digital art, 3D and Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI).

• This video has ganered over 9 million views on Twitter.

• We found out that the creator had replied to a user's query stating that it took him two to three weeks to complete this animated work.

• We also found another reply stating that the video was created on 3Ds Max, a 3D computer graphics program used for making 3D animations, videos, games and images.

We have reached out to the creator of this animated video, and the story would be updated once we receive a response.

Conclusion: An animated video of a whale hitting a ship and completely destroying is going viral as a real incident.

In the past, The Quint has debunked another animated video by the same creator, which went viral as a real incident of the Supermoon blocking the sun in the Arctic. The story can be read here.

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