Hoax Museum Blog: Animals

Ant Carries Crackers — My strong hunch is that this picture has been photoshopped. It looks too well composed not to have been. Also, I don't see how the crackers could balance that evenly on the ant's back. I don't know where the picture comes from, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was either from Worth1000 or some kind of inspirational poster.
Update: It is a Worth1000 picture. (Big surprise there, 90% of hoax pictures seem to originate from there.) It's part of a "Mission Impossible" gallery and was created by Jaffar1900. (Thanks to Marcan Dy Arabian for finding it on Worth1000.)

Monkey Art Fools Expert — Dr. Katja Schneider, director of the State Art Museum in Moritzburg, has been embarrassed by mistaking a painting done by Banghi, a 31-year-old female chimp, for a work by the late Ernst Wilhelm Nay:

The director of the State Art Museum of Moritzburg in Saxony-Anhalt, Katja Schneider, suggested the painting was by the Guggenheim Prize-winning artist Ernst Wilhelm Nay. "It looks like an Ernst Wilhelm Nay. He was famous for using such blotches of colour," Dr Schneider confidently asserted. The canvas was actually the work of Banghi, a 31-year-old female chimp at the local zoo. While Banghi likes to paint, she is not able to build up much of a body of work as her mate Satscho generally destroys her paintings before they can get to the gallery. But this one survived long enough to give Dr Schneider a red face. "I did think it looked a bit rushed," she told Bild newspaper.

Of course, this isn't the first time monkey art has fooled an expert. The classic case occurred in 1964 when newsmen from Sweden's Göteborgs-Tidningen obtained some paintings by Peter, a four-year-old chimp at the Boras zoo. They hung the paintings in a gallery, claiming they were the work of avant-garde artist Pierre Brassau. And soon the works were drawing critical acclaim. One critic wrote: "Brassau paints with powerful strokes, but also with clear determination. His brush strokes twist with furious fastidiousness. Pierre is an artist who performs with the delicacy of a ballet dancer."

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find examples posted online of the art of either Banghi or Pierre Brassau.

Elephant Loose in St. Petersburg — Ananova reports that an elephant is on the loose in St. Petersburg:

The animal, which was being transported through Russia by an unnamed Finnish company, escaped from its container by smashing through its walls. There have been a number of sightings around the city but no one has tried to catch the elephant yet.

But it appears that Ananova has done its usual thorough job of fact-checking, because the Moscow Times reports that the elephant was probably a hoax:

St. Petersburg police were looking for a mystery phone caller on Thursday after spending much of the night looking for an elephant. A man called the emergency services early Thursday on a cell phone and said an elephant he was transporting for a Finn had vanished, RIA-Novosti reported... Police turned up to investigate, but they could find no sign of the man or trailer, let alone the elephant, an animal that can grow up to 4 meters high and weigh up to 10 tons... Interfax reported that the man had called and said he had caught the elephant himself near 16 Ulitsa Obreli, the street in the city named after a famous Russian biologist. One witness was even reported as saying that he had seen an elephant heading down a street with a man running after it. Police eventually came to the conclusion that the call was a hoax.

Reminds me of the Central Park Zoo Escape of 1874.

Animatronic Chimp Head — I'm posting this in honor of Monkey Day. The Sharper Image is selling a life-size animatronic chimpanzee head. It's the perfect gift for those hard-to-buy-for people on your list, if you don't mind shelling out $150 for it:

"Alive" Chimpanzee can see, hear and feel in ways that allow him to interact intelligently with you, your family, your guests...and with baffled strangers. Soulful eyes track movements using infrared "radar" vision; his ears have stereoscopic sound sensors; his skin reacts to contact with touch sensors all around. Four distinctive emotional moods include "Curious," "Happy," "Fearful" and "Feisty."

My wife thinks she's getting a new TV for her office this Christmas. Imagine her surprise when she opens this instead! (Thanks to Big Gary for the link)

Happy Monkey Day — Happy Monkey Day. I'm eating a banana as I type this. (Imagine monkey sounds.)

Is Chin-Whiskered Charlie A Fraud? — Controversy is swirling in the world of muskie fishing over the status of Chin-Whiskered Charlie, the muskie that currently holds the title of biggest muskie ever caught, weighing in at 69 pounds, 11 ounces. He was reeled in by Louis Spray back in 1949. But now a group calling itself the World Record Muskie Alliance is challenging Charlie's right to the title. Based on an analysis of old photos of Charlie (Charlie himself was destroyed in a fire in 1959), they're claiming Charlie's a fraud. They suspect Spray stuffed him with wet sand to increase his weight:

The muskie alliance supplied vintage photos of the suspect fish to Mills, a professional surveyor and former Transport Canada investigator who uses physics and various computer measurement technologies to reconstruct traffic accidents, trace bullet trajectories and discern the height of suspected criminals from video surveillance cameras. "This was definitely my first fish," says Mills. "It was a unique application of the science I use, but I tackled it the same way I would with any other evidence." His findings: the muskie Spray said was 63 inches in length couldn't have been more than 55 inches from snout to tail; and its reported girth of 31.25 inches was not possible given the maximum 10-inch, single-side width calculated by Mills. The Muskie Alliance submitted the results to the National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame.

Meanwhile, Charlie's defenders are claiming this is all a plot dreamed up by people in Illinois to rob Wisconsin of the Muskie title. Since photos are all anyone has to go on to determine Charlie's true weight, the battle will likely rage on for a while.

Shark Caught With Shark in Mouth — Photos are doing the rounds (especially in Australia) of a large shark that was caught with another shark in its mouth. According to abc.net.au, the shark was caught at Tannum Beach:

Apparently the smaller fish was caught on Tannum's shark lines. While being pulled in, the movement attracted the attention of its larger colleague. The tiger shark was so reluctant to let go of its free meal, it was eventually pulled in to shore. These photographs depicting the shark, and its last meal, have since been doing the rounds - and perhaps persuading a few people to think twice before dipping a toe in around the Tannum area.

Monkey Day — Here's a new holiday to add to your calendar. It's Monkey Day on December 14:

Monkey Day is an annual holiday celebrated on December 14th that offers people a reprise from the traditional religious holidays permeating the month of December. Monkey Day is a fun way to celebrate all things simian, an excuse to hang out with friends and family dressed as monkeys and grunt at one another, and at the same time promoting knowledge and awareness of monkeys and their simian kin in a healthy manner. Monkey Day began five years ago as a practical joke left scribbled on a friend's calender, when the anointed date of December 14th came around a Monkey themed party gathered at the local bar and Monkey Day was born. Each year since, Monkey Day has grown in popularity, especially among the college crowd, falling dangerously close to the end of semester final exam week. Popular ways of celebrating Monkey Day include throwing a monkey themed party and dressing up as your favorite simian, grunting like a chimp all day long, and throwing feces on passers-by ( for legal purposes, monkeyday.com in no way supports the latter form of celebration ).

You can find more info at monkeyday.com. It sounds like as good an excuse for a party as any. But I worry that people will spend Monkey Day "grunting like a chimp," not realizing that chimps aren't monkeys. (Though I realize that Simian Day, while more accurate, wouldn't have quite the same ring to it.)

Was a Penguin Stolen from the New England Aquarium? — I had never heard this urban legend before, but the gist of it is that a young boy managed to steal a penguin from the New England Aquarium by carrying it out in his backpack. Last week the Aquarium held a press conference to officially deny the rumor:

"This week, I got a call from Fayetteville, Ark., about the penguin abduction," said aquarium spokesman Tony LaCasse. "I even got a call from California. We figured we had to do something." LaCasse speculated that the myth was hatched close to the release of the documentary March of the Penguins, which became a summer hit. With the release of the DVD this week, calls about the myth poured into the aquarium again, LaCasse said. All 61 penguins residing at the aquarium are safe and accounted for, LaCasse said. They waddle around an ocean tank with steep walls and zip through water, kept at a chilly 50 degrees, so fast they appear to be flying. No child could scale the tank railing, LaCasse said, drop 6 feet into the water, scoop up a penguin, and leave, at least not without being noticed.

Thanksgiving Turkey — Happy Thanksgiving everyone. My wife and I hate to have to prepare a huge meal and then deal with all the cleanup, so every year we go out to eat. This year we're going to try the all-you-can-eat Thanksgiving buffet at the Viejas casino. We've heard it's pretty good, and reasonably priced. And where better to celebrate Thanksgiving but at a Native American casino!

Anyway, in honor of Thanksgiving here's an image that's been circulating around for quite a while. As far as I know, it's real (though I'm not 100% sure). It's credited to a Reuters photographer, whose name I don't know. The scene was captured on Thanksgiving 2001 when President Bush did the annual pardoning of the turkey. The turkey that's pardoned gets to live out its life on a farm. There have been spoofs photos of this ceremony (below).

Dog Gives Birth to Green Puppy — A golden retriever has given birth to a green puppy, appropriately named Wasabi. Local 6 News reports:

The dog is healthy and green, according to the report. Local 6 News showed video of the puppy rolling around with its normal-looking newborn brothers and sisters. Skeptics said the dog had to be dyed green but the owner said the puppy was born green. Veterinarians said it is possible for a newborn puppy's fur to be green because the placenta, which is green, rubs off at birth.

This reminds me of the guy whose sweat turned green. I'm inclined to think the dog case might be real, because if you're going to dye a puppy, why do such a bad job? Go all out and make him glow in the dark. The puppy in the pictures hardly looks green at all (though maybe that's just because of the poor quality of the video images). Of course, if their next move is to sell the puppy on eBay, then I might suspect a hoax.

Hippo With Tortoise — This is a slightly old story, but very heartwarming. A baby hippo in Nairobi that survived the tsunami has apparently adopted a tortoise as its surrogate mother:

"It is incredible. A-less-than-a-year-old hippo has adopted a male tortoise, about a century old, and the tortoise seems to be very happy with being a 'mother'," ecologist Paula Kahumbu, who is in charge of Lafarge Park, told AFP. "After it was swept and lost its mother, the hippo was traumatized. It had to look for something to be a surrogate mother. Fortunately, it landed on the tortoise and established a strong bond. They swim, eat and sleep together," the ecologist added.

As far as I can tell, this story is completely true. But the real reason I'm posting about it is because I think it might provide me with a great title for my next book: Hippo Eats Tortoise. Kinda catchy, don't you think?

Pet Rat Grooming — Gary emailed me this article with the comment "Please tell me this is a hoax." Sadly, I think it's not. Here are some highlights from the article:

Grooming isn't just for dogs anymore, and many pet owners are bringing in their rats to groomers like Garrison, who uses waterless shampoo to make their coats shine and smell sweet... "We need to be there for all our clients," Garrison said. "I think we might be the only place around that grooms rats."...
"The most difficult part of grooming rats is trimming their nails," Garrison said. "They have very small feet." Ferguson recommends pet owners get their animals groomed at least once a month to protect them from parasites. "I love rats," she said. "It's an obsession to me. Sometimes when they get nervous they (urinate) but they don't usually bite. We know how to handle them because that's what we do."

A quick Google search brings up quite a few resources for rat owners who want to groom their pets. The biggest challenge for rat lovers seems to be the little drops of urine the delightful creatures leave as they walk around.

Do Round Bowls Make Goldfish Go Blind? — CNN reports that the city of Rome has passed a set of laws to prevent cruelty to animals. For instance, dog owners will be forced to walk their dogs regularly. And round goldfish bowls have been banned because round bowls supposedly cause the fish to go blind. Specifically, the article says:

The newspaper [Il Messaggero] reported that round bowls caused fish to go blind. No one at Rome council was available to confirm this was why they were banned. Many fish experts say round bowls provide insufficient oxygen for fish.

I have never before heard this claim about the dangerous effects of round bowls. I tried to google "round bowls goldfish blind" to see if anyone has written about this, but no luck. However, depending on the size of the opening in the bowl, it does seem logical that the fish may not get enough oxygen. And if they don't get enough oxygen, maybe they'll go blind (shortly before they die).

Incidentally, I'm totally in favor of laws forcing people to walk their dogs. I hate it when people (such as my neighbor) keep their dog chained up in their yard all day, every day.

Great Pointed Archer Society — Not many people like rats. But the members of the Great Pointed Archer Society do. As they proclaim on their very slick website: The immediate goal of this website is to replace the offensive name ‘rat’ with the untainted, and beautiful name Great Pointed Archer. By doing away with this all-to-common slur, we can begin to repair centuries of disrespect and hatred. After all, it’s not their fault they live in the sewer and eat trash.

It's not clear who's the creative force behind the Great Pointed Archer Society. It seems to be a little too well designed to actually be a society of rat lovers. For instance, compare it to the much less flashy (and therefore more obviously real) Rat Fan Club website. So almost everyone is guessing that it's a stealth advertising campaign whose ultimate object has yet to be revealed. The Great Pointed Archer Society is selling t-shirts (which is always a strong indicator of a hoax), but I can't believe that the entire site was created just to sell the shirts. (Thanks to S.M. Elliott for the link)

Victor the Talking Budgie — Victor is (or rather was) a budgie that, according to its owner, could speak in context. In other words, Victor could not only mimic words, as many birds can, but also carry on meaningful conversations. Victor has been a topic of discussion on the internet for over four years. However, I just became aware of him thanks to an email from Gretel Shuvzwichinstov. So here are the basic facts about Victor, as I understand them:

Victor belonged to Ryan Reynolds who, as he became aware that Victor was saying intelligible things, began to record him. Victor's conversations go something like this: Victor so cute. What will you do for Victor? Give me some carrot. I get lots of cheese, mmmm, cheese, cheese. So I talk too fast, so whatever! Reynolds has made many audio recordings of Victor available on his website. There are also videos of Victor speaking. Victor died in 2000, so it's impossible for anyone else to study him. Which is one of the reasons why a lot of people suspect Victor is simply an elaborate hoax concocted by Reynolds.

Another reason why this all might be a hoax is that budgies are not generally known for being able to carry on meaningful conversations. Also, Reynolds seems to be one of the very few people who can extract anything intelligible out of the weird noises Victor made. Though I can definitely catch the occasional word, most of Victor's squawks sound like something out of The Exorcist to me. I half suspect that if you played them backwards, you'd discover Victor was muttering Satanic curses in ancient Aramaic. If the Electronic Voice Phenomena advocates (the people who swear they can hear coffee pots talking to them) got hold of Victor, they would probably conclude he was channelling spirits from beyond.

In Reynolds' favor, he seems to passionately believe in Victor and, more generally, in the idea that birds possess the capacity for complex speech. He states that:

A majority of the people that come to this site embrace it for what it really is. A truthful study of a talking parrot that could speak in conversational language. However the claims that some make about it being a hoax are ridiculous and have no grounds whatsoever. Individuals who make these claims should understand that they are slandering me, especially if they say it in an open forum in writing. I do not take this lightly as I have worked very hard on these sites during the past few years to be libeled so unfairly.

So my hunch is that Reynolds is sincere (i.e. this isn't a deliberate hoax), but he's convinced himself there's something meaningful in a bird's random chatter. Making this an example of audio pareidolia.

CitiKitty: Cat Toilet Training Kit — I'm sorry. I refuse to believe it would be possible to train a cat to use a toilet, despite what the CitiKitty company might claim. After all, you can't train cats to do anything. (At least, not my cat.) This is how the CityKitty Cat Toilet Training Kit is supposed to work:

The specially designed training seat securely sits on your toilet filled with litter. Your cat naturally uses CitiKitty as its new litter box. The rings are removed thus reducing the amount of litter. Once all rings are removed your cat is toilet trained!

I think the cat might use the citikitty thing while it has litter in it. But once the litter is gone, the cat will not keep going back to where the litter used to be. Instead, it'll pee on your bed (or somewhere else designed to punish you and force you to bring back the litter). But in the interest of fairness, if anyone has successfully used this device, I'd be curious to hear about it.

Python Swallows Gator — A recent news story about a python swallowing a gator has been receiving a lot of attention. It's already been posted in the forum (by Stephen), but I've been getting so many emails about it that I decided to post it here as well. These are the facts, as I understand them: The body of a six-foot gator was found last week in the Everglades, inside of a python. The python had tried to swallow the gator, but this caused its stomach to burst open. It's stomach subsequently burst open. (Must have been an unpleasant way for the python to die.) I don't see any reason to doubt this information. Skip Snow, the biologist who found the bodies of the python and gator, seems like a credible source. The unresolved question, as Snow states, is why the python swallowed the gator, and under what circumstances. Did the python attack the gator while it was alive? Or did the python try to swallow a dead gator? No one knows. Either way, that was a pretty suicidal python. Inevitably this will add fuel to all those urban legends about people eaten by snakes.

Seattle Attempts to Save Rat Population — Signs that appeared in a park in Fremont near Seattle announced that the city's park department "was planning to build a habitat to save the declining canal-rat population, species name: Rattus Norvegicus. The signs said the city was going to plant thorny bushes along that bank of the Lake Washington Ship Canal to make a safe and human-free habitat to increase the 'canal rat community.'" It all turned out to be a hoax, though according to the Seattle Times, many people were fooled: "At the Indoor Sun Shoppe across the street, customers were abuzz that Seattle is trying to save rats... Only one person said he thought it was a good idea, to protect them from the herons."

Killer Dolphins Set Loose by Katrina — I've received a lot of emails about a story in The Observer a few days ago alleging that thirty-six dolphins "trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater" and "carrying 'toxic dart' guns" were swept out of their tanks by Hurricane Katrina and are now at large in the Gulf of Mexico. This story is very doubtful for a number of reasons.

First, it seems to be a wild rumor inspired by the true report that eight bottlenose dolphins were washed out of their marina by Katrina, but were later recovered. Second, The Observer's story relies entirely upon one source, a "respected accident investigator" named Leo Sheridan. But as The Register points out, Mr. Sheridan has been the source for many dubious conspiracy-style claims in the past.

In 2003 he told The Guardian that he didn't believe the official explanation that the English aviator Amy Johnson's plane crashed in 1941 because it ran out of fuel. He believed she had been shot down.

In 1998 he told the Observer the cause of death of 22 dolphins found washed up on the shore in southern France was that "'these were dolphins trained by the US navy, and that something went badly wrong... They were disposed of to conceal the existence of the American's military dolphin programme.' According to Mr Sheridan, the United States navy launched a classified programme, the Cetacean Intelligence Mission, in San Diego in 1989 with the approval of President George Bush. The dolphins, fitted with harnesses around their necks and with small electrodes planted under their skin, were taught first to patrol and protect Trident submarines in harbour and stationary warships at sea."

And in 1991 The Observer used him as the source for a story about crop circles: "Britain's crop circles are caused by squabbling birds marking out their feeding territory, says environmental investigator Leo Sheridan. 'Each morning birds that feed off the crops, such as starlings and sparrows, squabble over their patch of field,' he says. 'The birds sometimes two or three hundred of them whirl round in circles close to the top of the crops, flattening them with the action of their wings as they fight each other for a patch of field.' Mr Sheridan, who is employed by aviation authorities to investigate atmospheric and environmental influences on air disasters, claims he has witnessed the phenomenon in Devon and Cornwall."

In other words, Leo Sheridan is The Observer's resident crackpot-on-call. They must phone him up whenever they want to add a bit of drama or weirdness to their stories.

Further discrediting the story is the US Navy's insistence that it has never trained dolphins for attack missions. The dolphins are only trained to locate suspicious objects. Not to destroy them.