WhatsApp Messages Create An Entire Alien Saga On Karnataka-Kerala Border, But Here's The Truth

A video of a strange-looking beast clutching at the metal cage went viral in Bengaluru on Thursday. The video uploaded on YouTube soon began to be widely shared on WhatsApp and other social media networks.

Mumbai Mirror

The message accompanying the video claimed, in poor English, that ¡°very unseen strange creature found at Kerala Karnataka border on 30 Nov 2016 . This is not funny. Caught in Kerala Karnataka border. It had been eating all animals including humans. Total 4 reported and only 1 caught. Please be safe during the travel through jungle and palm trees. This is not a graphics. Source from authenticated (sic)¡±.

A cursory search on the internet threw up the real story.

The video and photographs are that of a diseased sun bear that residents of Borneo, Malaysia, came across in January last year. There too, locals thought it was an ¡°alien¡± and some had even pelted it with stones.

A healthy sun bear has a lush dark fur with a honey-coloured patch around its neck. Conservationists say the sun bear is a protected species in Borneo as numbers are declining rapidly due to loss of habitat.

Malaysian media had reported that the diseased sun bear was captured (and that was the image which was doing the rounds on Thursday) and the authorities were nursing it back to health

But on Thursday, many Bengalureans were taken in by the pictures and widely shared them without checking the authenticity ¨C a big problem since most people tend to believe ¡°news¡± they see on Facebook feeds, Twitter timelines or WhatsApp forwards.