Fact Check: The emotional story attached to cheetahs attacking a deer is fabricated

New Delhi (Vishvas News). A picture is going viral on social media. In this viral picture, two cheetahs can be seen attacking a deer. The special thing about this picture is that both the cheetahs have grabbed the deer by the neck, but despite this, this deer is very stable, which is surprising considering the situation. The post is claiming, “This deer surrendered to cheetahs to save its calves.” We found in our investigation that this story is untrue. The photographer who took the picture has also confirmed this.

What’s in the viral post?

Facebook user Fadeematu Ibrahim Hamman shared the post, in which the description read: “This picture is considered one of the best pictures in the last ten years because it made its owner ((the photographer)) in a state of depression: The story says: these two cheetahs attacked the gazelle at a time when it was playing with its young children, and that the deer had an opportunity to escape, and the distance and saving her life were in her favour, but she decided to surrender herself to the cheatahs in this way. Why ?? To give her youngsters a chance to escape…because if she ran away first, there wouldn’t be much time for her babies to escape. The picture is the last moment of the mother with her throat in the mouth of the cheetah, as she looks firmly to make sure that her young escaped safely before they were prey. A mother is the only person in the world who can give her life for you for nothing. Remember her, even with a prayer, may Allah have mercy on our mothers . Aameen thumma Aameen #Mother ”

The archived version of the post can be viewed here.

Investigation 

We first searched for this picture with the help of Google reverse image tool. We found this photo uploaded on the timeline of a Facebook user named Alison Buttigieg on February 13, 2017. Uploading this picture, Alison Buttigieg wrote, “My Stranglehold photo went viral with a completely ridiculous fake story accompanying it, and the implications I fell into depression after I took it (seriously who comes up with this crap?!?) – Not to mention the gross copyright violations. Sensationalism at its best – complete fiction so that people get more likes on their page. The photo with the fake story has been shared hundreds of thousands of times on various social media. I am getting inundated by hundreds and hundreds of messages asking me whether I am the “depressed photographer”. I have been tagged in LinkedIn with the fake story – that’s going to do wonders for my career. What a vile world we live in, full of stupid gullible people spreading #fakenews like crazy. To set the record straight the real story can be found here: http://www.alisonbuttigieg.com/cheetahkill/ – with Alison Buttigieg Wildlife Photography.”

We also found this photo on Alison Buttigieg’s website. Here we got the details about this picture. The description accompanying the picture read, “I witnessed this Cheetah kill in September 2013 in the Maasai Mara, Kenya.  Narasha, the cheetah mom, was teaching her youngsters how to kill prey.  However they were a bit slow on the uptake and they were playing with the hapless Impala prey instead of killing it. Narasha, the cheetah mom is the one that is grabbing the impala by the neck in all the photos.   The youngsters practice some skills like pouncing and tripping which they get right, but they cannot seem to be able to get how to strangle the impala effectively.”

For confirmation, we reached out to Alison Buttigieg to inquire about the viral claim being made with the image. She said, “This claim is absolutely absurd. I have denied it many times before.”

This post was shared on Facebook by a user named Fadeematu Ibrahim Hamman. After scanning the profile of this user, we found that the user has 9,395 followers on Facebook.