The Return To Innocence

Nature is not exacting revenge on humankind for wrongdoings — it is simply carrying on with the business of life

- Prerna Bindra

Oh Deer! Truly a party time for wildlife, chirps a tweet, accompanying a photograph that shows a herd of deer lounging in the middle of an uncharacteristically empty Ooty-Coimbatore road. Social media is flooded with such news of wildlife taking over urban areas as humans stay quarantined in nationwide lockdowns to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. They show dolphins swimming in the Venetian canals otherwise swamped by tourists, a Malabar civet out for a stroll in the surprisingly deserted streets of Kozhikode and an endearing picture of elephants passed out in a tea garden after, apparently, having drunk corn wine in a village in Yunnan, China.

It’s too good to be true, though.

The Sika deer, in a picture shot in 2004, are not gracing the highway that connects Ooty to Coimbatore, but are in Japan’s Nara Park. The dolphins didn’t visit Venice; the film clip was shot at a port in Sardinia, in the Mediterranean Sea. It wasn’t a Malabar civet — so rare an animal that no published proof or photograph exists — but the fairly common Small Indian civet, which could be spotted in rural and urban areas pre-virus too.

And those elephants? We don’t know where — and if — they imbibed liquor but a Chinese news report debunked the posts.

The inaccuracy is common knowledge, but the fake clips are still going viral. The civet clip for instance, had over 1.6 million views. Why? A recent article in National Geographic puts it down to our “greed for virality”, our constant craving for instant gratification and popularity, easily provided through likes and retweets on social media.