Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
Claim
Video shows a tiger preying on a cow in Bardiya National Park of Nepal.
Fact
Viral video showing a tiger attacking a cow is actually from Bandhavgarh National Park of Madhya Pradesh state in India.
Every now and then, we come across news and videos of tigers or other felines attacking cattle or humans. This is more obvious in Nepal which made a remarkable success in tiger conservation in 2022 with an incredible feat of nearly tripling its tiger numbers in just over a decade. Against this backdrop, a video allegedly showing a tiger preying on a grazing bull in Nepal’s Bardiya national park has been widely shared on TikTok.
TikTok user @storymaker023 posted a video showing a tiger stealthily coming out of a forest and killing a cow grazing in a field. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Bulls grazing on a field. A tiger has killed a bull in broad daylight.”
The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
The video posted on June 16 has garnered 6288 likes, 68 users have shared it and 51 people have commented on it. Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the authenticity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker split the video into several keyframes and conducted reverse searches on them. The search threw up several results matching the viral video.
On checking a video, dated 14 June, 2023, published on a YouTube Channel named Wildlife with Irfan, we found that the video frames exactly matched the viral video. However, we couldn’t find any description in the video.
We also found the same video published on Zeenews/Rajasthan. The description of the video, dated June 17, 2023, confirmed that the rare footage of tiger preying on a cow was captured at Bandhavgarh sanctuary, located in Madhya Pradesh.
Further, we checked another video, whose frames exactly matched the viral video, published on a YouTube Channel named ‘Wildlife Diaries’. The video details mentioned that the video was captured at Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve.
Thus, our findings showed that the footage of tiger pouncing on a bull is from Bandhavgarh National Park of Madhya Pradesh state in India.
Conclusion
No, the viral footage of tiger preying on a bull is not from the Bardiya national park of Nepal but actually from Bandhavgarh National Park of India.
Result: Missing Context
Sources
Wild Life with Irfan/YouTube, 14 June, 2023
Unusual stuffs /YouTube, 8 July, 2023
Wildlife Diaries /YouTube, 17 June, 2023
ZeeNews Rajastha, 17 June, 2023
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Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
