This photo of an elephant carrying a lion cub is an April Fools' joke

29 March 2019
What was claimed

This image shows an elephant carrying a sick lion cub to water.

Our verdict

The image was an April Fools' Joke digitally edited by a South African game reserve.

It was described as “the best photo of this century”, but is a photo of an elephant carrying a sick lion cub genuine?

Sadly not. The photo was created by Kruger National Park in South Africa and posted on April Fools' Day 2018.

Note how the photo was “tinged by Sloof Lirpa” and then read Sloof Lirpa backwards.

As Snopes and AFP Fact Check have shown, the original images of the lioness, the elephant and the cub were spliced together by someone handy with Photoshop.

We’ve written more about how to spot misleading images online here.

This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as satire because it’s an April Fools' joke.

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