Fact check: Viral pic of Chimpanzee hugging a man is not from Amazon rain forest
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found this to be a misleading claim. The viral picture has no connection with the recent Amazon forest fire, neither it is from the Amazon rain forest.
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India Today Fact Check
The viral picture of Gorilla is old and not from Amazon but Africa.
The massive outbreak of fire in the Amazon forest in Brazil has already created an outcry internationally to save the world's largest rain forest.
People around the world are sharing several heart-wrenching pictures of the wildlife on social media, depicting the calamity.
However, several of them are found to be not related to the Amazon forest fire and have been fact-checked earlier by India Today TV.
THE CLAIM
Recently, a Bangla website "Bangla news live" published a story of a chimpanzee along with a picture. In the picture, it looks like the chimpanzee was pleading to a man by hugging his leg. The story claimed that the chimpanzee is begging for help from a fire-fighter to save his life from the forest fire in Amazon.
The archived version of the story is saved here.
THE TRUTH
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found this to be a misleading claim. The viral picture has no connection with the recent Amazon forest fire, neither it is from Amazon.
Taken in 2017, this is a picture of a female Gorilla from an orphanage in the Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa.
She was trying to cheer up her human caretaker by hugging and holding him.
IT'S VIRAL
This viral story appealed to people on social media. Several Facebook pages like "Law & Justice", "Study with Fun" and "Bharat Mata Ki Jai" posted the same web story.
HOW WE FOUND THE TRUTH?
Simple reverse image search on the viral picture opened up several links to various websites that have already published this picture earlier.
A website like "Ladbible" published this picture along with several others in 2017. "Daily Mail" also published a story in the same year with similar pictures of the human caretaker and her Gorilla inmate.
According to these articles, photographer Nelis Wolmarans had captured these rare moments of a female Gorilla Matabishi who was trying to cheer up her caretaker Matthieu by imitating his sad expressions.
This had happened at Senkwekwe Mountain Gorilla Orphanage in the Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa.
THE CONCLUSION
Amazon- the world's largest rainforest contains millions of species of plants and animals.
The recent fire has created havoc on its flora and fauna. This has already been reported in international media.
The fire has definitely affected the wildlife to a great extent but this viral story of the chimpanzee is not from Amazon and has got nothing to do with the forest fire.
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