About a week or two after several countries over the world imposed a partial or total lockdown, there were many posts on social media about how the reduction in human activity has resulted in the increased visibility of animals and birds in public spaces.
Among the most widely shared posts were dolphins and swans returning to canals in Venice and a group of elephants passed out after getting drunk on corn wine in a Chinese town. These posts were shared and talked about by some famous personalities like Rohit Sharma.
Of course, in a world stricken by a pandemic, such stories might warm the cockles of one’s heart and they were seen as a silver lining.
Unfortunately, National Geographic and a few fact-checking sites burst this bubble, finding the information fake.
According to Nat Geo, “The swans in the viral posts regularly appear in the canals of Burano, a small island in the greater Venice metropolitan area, where the photos were taken. The “Venetian” dolphins were filmed at a port in Sardinia, in the Mediterranean Sea, hundreds of miles away. No one has figured out where the drunken elephant photos came from, but a Chinese news report debunked the viral posts.”
Some were miffed with Nat Geo for verifying the posts (One of them posted on Facebook: “Wow. This is so like telling your kid ‘Santa isn’t real’ right after the child happily sat on Santa's lap in the mall.”)
But many took this opportunity to get some good humour going to post obviously fake pictures of “wildlife” returning to places hitherto occupied by humans. What started as heart-warming posts have now become giggle-evoking memes.
Like the return of Godzilla (along with the swans and dolphins) to picturesque canals.
https://twitter.com/ThePlanetaryGuy/status/1246482045607477248
And, according to this post, you could find a few prehistoric creatures roaming in Times Square.
Of course, the memes have caught on big time in India too.
