Fact Check: Photo Showing Wild Bear Chasing a Group of People Is Edited

New Delhi (Vishvas News): A photo going viral on social media shows a wild bear chasing some people. The claim alongside the post states that a wild bear is chasing the National Geographic crew during the filming of a documentary video. Vishvas News investigated and found the post to be fake. The photo isn’t real and is created using photo editing tools.

Claim

Vishvas News received a post on its Whatsapp chatbot to fact check. In the post, a bear could be seen chasing a group of people. The caption along with the post reads: “Wild Bear Chases National Geographic Video Crew During Documentary Filming.”

The archived link of the Facebook post can be checked here.

Investigation

Vishvas News investigated using the Google Reverse Image Search tool. We found that the original picture had been taken on a film location scout in Colorado and was edited with a stock photograph of a bear. Here is the stock photo of the bear that is used in the edited image. The mirror-imaged picture was used in the viral post.

The original image of the group of people can be seen in a report published on GIZMODO.

Vishvas News contacted National Geographic through email. As per the reply received from National Geographic, “This image is fake and this did not happen on set.”

The same photo was shared in a story on The Guardian with the title: “Five fake photos that went viral in 2015”. As per the report, the photo was actually taken on a film location scout in Colorado four years ago and photoshopped with a stock shot of a bear then shared on Facebook to spook their friends.

The photo is shared on Facebook by a page named Ben Heine. We scanned the page and found that the page has 302,806 followers.