The Hoax Photo Archive: Animals

About the
Hoax Photo Archive

Images are categorized by theme, technique of fakery, and time period. Click on a thumbnail for more details about each photo. Included in the database are photos that are "real," but which have been suspected of being fake, as well as images whose veracity remains undetermined.

Techniques of
Photo Fakery

There are six basic techniques of faking a photo:

1: Inserting details. This includes placing an element from one photo into another to create a composite image, reproducing a detail of the photo by cloning it, superimposing an image onto another, or drawing-in details.

2: Deleting details. This is usually done by extending background elements over the unwanted detail. Or one can crop out the unwanted detail.

3: Manipulating elements within the photo. For instance, adjusting the color, resizing details, or rotating or moving details.

4: falsifying the caption.

5: Staging the scene. This is considered fakery particularly in photojournalism. Varieties of staging a scene include using models and cutouts and inserting a prop into the scene.

6: Taking a photo at a trick angle. The most common example of this is the use of forced perspective.

The Hoax Photo Archive
A catalog of photo fakery throughout history

Years Archived:
1840-1900 | 1900-1919 | 1920-1939 | 1940-1959 | 1960-1979 | 1980-1999 | 2000-2004 | 2005-Present

Category: Animals

The Sympsychograph. Supposedly a psychic projection of "a cat in its real essence." Intended as a joke, but taken seriously by many. (September 1896)	A Bear and its Hunters. A humorous example of a staged scene. (ca. 1900)	Pacific Sea Monster. Men in Ballard, Washington pose with a sea serpent that looks suspiciously like a log. (1906)
William ‘Dad’ Martin’s Freak Postcards. Martin made a fortune selling "freak" postcards that featured midwesterners interacting with oversized animals and vegetables. (1909-1910)	The Nest of a Fatu-Liva. An image of square eggs satirically proves that the camera never lies. (1921)	Mother Cat Stops Traffic. The news photographer arrived too late to capture the original scene, so he convinced the policeman to recreate it. (July 29, 1925)
Whopper Hoppers. Giant grasshoppers were particularly popular subjects for tall-tale postcards during the 1930s. (circa 1935)	The Peppered Moth. The many biology textbooks that used this image did not reveal that the moths were dead and glued to the bark. (1955)	Pike Swallows Trout. This award-winning photo was taken at the Alaska Department of Fish & Game aquarium in Anchorage. It was not photoshopped! (Jan 22, 2001)
Helicopter Shark. Despite what this photo shows, a Great White shark has never attacked a helicopter in San Francisco Bay. (Circulating online since Aug 2001)	Manitoba Home Security. A digital composite makes it appear that polar bears are relaxing outside someone's house. (Found online in 2003)	Camel Spiders in Iraq. It's true that camel spiders are very large, but much of the information about these creatures that accompanied this picture as it went around the internet was false. (Found online, Spring 2004)
Modern-Day Diplocaulus. The mysterious creature in the bucket was actually a clay model, not a surviving prehistoric Diplocaulus. (Circulating online since late 2004)	“Qinghai-Tibet railway opens green passage for wildlife”. This award-winning Chinese photo appeared to show the peaceful co-existence of antelope with a new high-speed train. Unfortunately the photo was a digital composite. (Published in 2006. Debunked in 2008.)	Paper Tiger. The South China tiger in this photo, a species feared to be extinct, turned out to be a paper cutout. (October 3, 2007)
Page 1 of 1 pages