Lighthouse Journalism found a video that is being widely shared on social media platforms. A video claimed to show demon crabs emerging from the Indian Ocean during the rainy season.
During our investigation, we found the viral claim to be misleading. The video shows crab sculptures in Wuhu Riverside Park, Wuhu City in China.
Claim:
Instagram user news.hook shared the viral video with a misleading claim on their profile.
Other users are also sharing the same video with similar claims.
Investigation:
We started our investigation by running a reverse image search on the keyframes obtained from the video.
We found out that similar videos were uploaded on TikTok, a social networking website over a year ago.
We also found a post on Reddit, made a year ago.
A comment mentioned that these are sculptures.
Taking a cue from this information, we ran a Google keyword search. We found a similar-looking picture on Pinterest. Which stated that the image shows, “Crabs, bronze statue, pedestrian street along the Yangtze River, Wuhu”.
Again, through a Google search we found a research paper titled, ‘The connotation of Chinese crab culture: a comprehensive review from the perspectives of literature, art, and diet. We found a similar image in this research paper.
The image was titled: Crab sculpture in Wuhu Riverside Park, Wuhu City, China
The paper also mentioned: In the Wuhu Riverside Park (Wuhu City, China), there are several crab sculptures (Figure 5A) that climb up the marble steps, make threatening gestures, and run amuck.
Also, in the video, the crabs are seen not moving at all. In one of the keyframes obtained from the video, we saw the crab installed using a metal rod.
Conclusion: Viral video of sculptures is being widely shared as real giant crabs emerging from the Indian Ocean. The viral claim is misleading.
