An old video of hippos in a muddy creek was consistently shared in posts that wrongly declared it was shot in a dried-up waterway in southwestern Bangladesh following a suffocating heatwave in April 2024. The video has actually distributed online given that November 2022 in posts about a national forest in Uganda.
“What’s this thing appeared after the canal of Saer in Satkhira dried up,” checked out a Bengali-language Facebook post on April 29, 2024, describing a canal in the largely inhabited Satkhira city in southwestern Bangladesh.
The post consisted of a video that appeared to reveal hippos indulging mud.
It distributed as Bangladesh was grasped by a heatwave that authorities stated eliminated a minimum of 7 individuals and required authorities to close schools across the country.
The typical temperature levels in the nation in April were the most popular given that it started keeping weather condition records in 1948.
Comprehensive clinical research study has actually discovered environment modification is triggering heatwaves to end up being longer, more regular and more extreme.
The video was likewise shared together with a comparable claim in other places on Facebook here and here.
The video, nevertheless, is unassociated to the heatwave in Bangladesh.
Uganda national forest
Google reverse image searches utilizing the video’s keyframes discovered it was previously shared in high resolution on Facebook on November 23, 2022 by a Uganda-based trip company called Wildfriends Africa (archived link).
“Hippos stuff themselves into a single muddy waterhole in a rush to cool down their hairless bodies under the scorching African sun,” checked out part of the post’s caption.
It included the video was shot at the Queen Elizabeth National Forest in Uganda.
Below is a screenshot contrast of the video in the incorrect posts (left) and the clip from 2022 (right):
Joseph Abayo, handling director of Wildfriends Africa, informed AFP on Might 20: “The video was in fact taken in 2022 by me and we have more of such videos experienced in the very same area.”
The Wildfriends Africa Facebook page likewise released a comparable video drawn from the very same place on November 23, 2022 (archived link).
Abayo included: “Those declaring it’s from Bangladesh simply wish to paint a picture of their nation’s tourist brand name.”
The video was likewise released by video company Newsflare in a post about Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National forest (archived link).
Misrepresented place
The video shared in the incorrect Facebook posts reveals a muddy wasteland, by contrast with the Pran Saer Canal which streams through Satkhira, a populous town in southwestern Bangladesh.
Satkhira likewise has actually no recorded hippo population.
AFP examined pictures of the Pran Saer Canal on Google Maps and discovered it did not match the video shared in incorrect posts.
Below is a screenshot contrast of the video shared in an incorrect context online (left) and an image tagged on Google Street View of the Pran Saer Canal (best):
AFP has actually unmasked other false information about the heatwave in Bangladesh here.
