Old video of hippos bathing in mud was not filmed in Bangladesh

An old video of hippos in a muddy creek was repeatedly shared in posts that falsely claimed it was filmed in a dry canal in southwestern Bangladesh following a sweltering heatwave in April 2024. The video has circulated online since November 2022 in posts about a national park in Uganda.

“What is this that appeared after the Saer canal in Satkhira dried up,” read an article in Bengali language. Facebook post on April 29, 2024, referring to a canal in the densely populated city of Satkhira in southwestern Bangladesh.

The post included a video that appeared to show hippos wallowing in the mud.

It circulated while Bangladesh was dominated by a heat wave which authorities said killed at least seven people and forced authorities to close schools across the country.

Average temperatures in the country in April were the hottest since it began keeping weather records in 1948.

Extensive scientific research has found that climate change is causing heat waves to become longer, more frequent and more intense.

The video was also shared alongside a similar claim elsewhere on Facebook here It is here.

The video, however, is not related to the heat wave in Bangladesh.

Uganda National Park

Google reverse image searches using the video’s keyframes found it was earlier shared in high resolution on Facebook on November 23, 2022 by a Uganda-based tourism agency called Wildfriends Africa (archived link).

“Hippos huddle in a single muddy pit in their rush to cool their hairless bodies under the scorching African sun,” read part of the post’s caption.

He added that the video was filmed in Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda.

Below is a comparison of the video screenshot in the fake posts (left) and the 2022 clip (right):

Joseph Abayo, managing director of Wildfriends Africa, told AFP on May 20: “The video was actually taken in 2022 by me and we have more videos of this type found in the same location.”

The Wildfriends Africa Facebook page also published a similar video taken from the same location on November 23, 2022 (archived link).

Abayo added: “Those who claim to be Bangladeshi just want to paint a picture of their country’s tourism brand.”

The video was also Published by video agency Newsflare in an article about Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda (archived link).

Misrepresented location

The video shared in the fake Facebook posts shows a muddy wasteland, in contrast to the Pran Saer Canal, which runs through Satkhira, a densely populated city in southwestern Bangladesh.

Satkhira also has no documented population of hippos.

AFP checked images of Canal Pran Saer on Google Maps and found they did not match the video shared in fake posts.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video shared in a fake online context (left) and a Photograph marked on Google Street View of Canal Pran Saer (right):

AFP debunks other misinformation about Bangladesh heatwave here.