CLAIM
A photo of a “different specie” allegedly found in Madhya Pradesh’s Chitrakoot has gone viral on Facebook.
The photo shared by a Gourav Garg on a group named ‘ye dil hai asshiqana’ almost a week ago had over 7,000 likes and was shared around 3,46,000 at the time of writing this story.
The caption, which is in Hindi, loosely translates to: “A different specie has been found in the forest of Chitrakoot. Something good will happen with whoever shares this. Jai Bajrang Bali (sic).”
WHAT IS THE TRUTH?
The claim is false and the photo is actually of an art-piece created by an Italian artist, Laira Maganuco, who creates life-like sculptures using silicone rubber.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We conducted a Google reverse image search on the viral photo and found Laira Maganuco’s Instagram account which carried this picture. The picture was posted in 2018.
The artist identifies herself as a hyper realism silicon sculptor. We also found a Facebook post by her of the same art piece.
The same photo earlier went viral with a different claim in 2018.
The claim back then read: “In Kerala, found a new form of life which researchers say it existed about thousand years ago. It is found that the cells of the aliens do not match with the human cells. The aliens do not eat what humans eat. They consume their food using the sunlight as believes.”