What was claimed
A video of a man being rescued from floodwaters by an elephant shows recent flooding in Nepal.
Our verdict
This clip isn’t from the recent floods. It has been online since at least 9 August, more than two weeks before the flash floods of 26 August in Nepal.
A video of an elephant rescuing a man from floodwaters has been shared online with the suggestion that it shows the recent flooding in Nepal.
One post claims: “In Nepal, elephants were seen saving people from the devastating Flood”, while another includes “#Nepal” in the caption.
We’ve not been able to verify the origins of the footage ourselves, but this video has been online since at least 9 August, more than two weeks before yesterday’s flash flooding in Nepal. Several hundred people have been confirmed dead following the disaster, which reportedly took place after the collapse of part of a Himalayan glacier.
The clip was posted on YouTube on 9 August by the Bangladeshi news site Nagorik Protidin. It includes overlaid text which says, in Bengali: “Pet elephant saves owner from flood”.
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The same video was also posted to Facebook on the same day by an Indian news site which claimed it was filmed during flooding which struck the country’s Assam region in July.
We often see miscaptioned videos and images circulating in the aftermath of natural disasters. It’s important to consider whether what you are seeing online is accurate before sharing. Our guides to identifying misleading images and videos can help you do this.
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 missing context because this clip was first shared online weeks before the flash flooding in Nepal.
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