In the latest gotcha news is the viral video of what appeared to be a golden eagle snatching up a tot in a Montreal park. Those dang Montrealers. When they aren't taking monkeys shopping at IKEA, they are honing their animation skills.
Turns out the video, which according to an article in Gawker, has now been claimed as the handiwork of students at animation and design school Centre NAD. Bar a few doubters, for the most part the Internet was fooled by the hoax.
Suspicions were cast after the incident failed to ignite Canadian media sources, and the computer-generated images were flawed at particular intervals: the bird's shadow momentarily disappearing and the tot's "ragdoll-like" fall. Seems like a story someone would cover.
But even some ornithologists were fooled, it seems. Renowed bird man Kenn Kaufman states that the video is an obvious dud: "using a falconer's bird, and probably a fake toddler for the distant scene. With all the ignorance about nature that's out there already, the last thing we need is this kind of stupid garbage."
Stupid garbage is a little harsh, maybe. Yet does make you wonder if you can truly trust anything you see on the internet.
CBC's This is That radio show spoofed listeners last week with a made up story about a bylaw requiring dogs to follow commands in both English and French.
I thought that, following the whole Kate crank call ordeal, we were done with such spoofs. Guess not.
Watch it again. Were you fooled?
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