Last week, the internet exploded when The Sun claimed to be in possession of footage that shows a live (albeit suspiciously blurry) woolly mammoth crossing a river in Russia. Now, the original video used to create the dubious clip has surfaced.
https://gizmodo.com/woolly-mammoth-alive-and-caught-on-tape-maybe-5883483
In their original coverage, The Sun reported that the video had been shot in 2011 by an anonymous, government-employed engineer — which is pretty much true, provided you replace the bit about “an anonymous government-employed engineer” with “writer and videographer Ludovic Petho.” According to LiveScience, Petho filmed the river scene during a 10 day backpacking trip through the Russian mountains as part of a project he’s putting together about his grandfather’s escape from a Siberian POW camp in 1915.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Qsdxye6Yc
Shown here is Petho’s original footage — originally uploaded to YouTube back in July of 2011 — and below is the clip that purportedly features a live mammoth. See if you can spot the difference between the two videos (spoiler: there’s no mammoth in Petho’s footage).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye4jzSLX0mI
“I don’t recall seeing a mammoth,” explains Petho. “There were bears, deer, and sable…But no woolly mammoths.”
“I had no idea my footage was used to make this fake sighting.”
[Spotted on LiveScience]
Original footage by Ludovic Petho
Top image is of Lyuba, the 40,000 year old frozen baby Mammoth photographed by Francis Latreille via National Geographic
