DEBUNKED

Did this cat really cuddle up to a video of his former owner – or is it a hoax?

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A cat watches a video of his owner and snuggles up to the telephone when he hears his voice. It's really cute… but it's also not true.
A cat watches a video of his possessor and snuggles up to the telephone when he hears his phonation. It's really cute… but information technology's too not true.

If there'south ane thing the Net has taught usa, it'southward that humans really love cat videos. Just in early September, people went especially wild for ane in particular. Co-ordinate to the caption, the video showed a cat watching a video of his former owner, who had recently died. The true cat cuddles upward to the phone, as if he is giving his owner 1 final cuddle. Information technology'due south a sad and sweetness story and over 30 million people watched information technology. There's only one outcome – information technology isn't true.

This video went viral after a person in Turkey shared information technology on September four. He says that this white-and-marmalade cat was watching a video of his owner, who had recently died.

Afterward several seconds of tear-jerking music, the true cat rubs upwardly confronting the telephone, as if to cuddle up to his former owner.

The video garnered more than 30 million views. Though it was originally posted by someone in Turkey, animal rights groups in other countries picked up it and started sharing it equally well.

Diverse media outlets like KSAT 12 (a TV station in San Antonio, Texas), La Dépêche du Midi (a newspaper in southern France) and Sputnik (a Russian media outlet) also shared the video.

The video was shared by many pages on Facebook.

Did this true cat actually cuddle up to a smartphone subsequently seeing a video of his owner?

This video does originally come from Turkey. However, it has been digitally altered. Someone lowered the image quality, and the soundtrack to the video was as well modified to make information technology more emotionally intense.

If yous practice a opposite image search for the video (click here to find out how), so yous can find the real story.

Information technology turns out that the Turkish media outlet Teyit.org, which specialises in verifying videos circulating online, decided to investigate this video when information technology first started beingness shared in February 2018. Fact-chekers at Teyit were suspicious because there was little information about who the owner was or where the video had come from.

Their investigation found that the video was filmed in Apr 2016 by a Turkish woman named Sevilay Deryal. She posted a video of her true cat Mia as part of an online contest.

In the original, high-quality video, you can see that the true cat is watching a video of some other cat and a turtle – non a video of her owner. Yous can check out the video here.

"What they did amounts to emotional abuse"

Sevilay Deryal, who is very much alive, gave an interview to Teyit.org in February 2018 :

The people who shared this video made the story upward entirely. I retrieve that what they did amounts to emotional abuse.

After people found out that I was the cat'due south owner and I wasn't dead, I got a text from a woman who said that her son had spent an entire day crying after seeing the video.

She asked me to have a motion-picture show of the true cat and send it to him so that he would calm downwardly considering, every 24-hour interval, he asked her if they could adopt the owner-less true cat.

People who make up simulated stories shouldn't emotionally corruption other people. In this example, many people – including children and elderly people – were deeply affected by this story."

France 24 contacted Deryal on September xi and she said that her true cat was doing well, despite recovering after a lung operation.

You lot tin can bank check out other videos of Deryal'due south cat on her YouTube channel.

In summary, keep in mind that:

1. Merely because a video is cute doesn't mean that it is existent. It could have been doctored by someone who wants to manipulate viewers emotionally. You should always try to verify videos and establish the original context in which they were fabricated.

ii. If you share a video without verifying it, yous might exist sharing a video that has been doctored or taken out of context. Your share allows the people who manipulated the video to generate clicks and, thus, brand coin.