This is a cuddly toy made by a Russian artist, not a rare red owl

This article is more than one year old.
Published on August 6, 2019 at 06:25
1 min read
By Johnny LIEU

An image has been shared tens of thousands of times in multiple Facebook posts which claim it shows a rare, red owl. The claim is false; the image shows a cuddly toy made by a Russian artist.

The photo was published in this Facebook post on July 30, 2018. It has been shared more than 22,000 times after being published by a page called Pictures in History, which has more than 6,000,000 followers.

The caption states: “The extremely rare Red Owl..”

Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:

The same image was published with a similar claim on Facebook here, here and here.

The claim is false; the image shows a cuddly toy made by a Russian artist.

A reverse image search on Yandex found the image published on a blog post here, attributed to Russian artist Marina Yamkovskaia.

In an email to AFP dated July 3, Yamkovskaia said she made the teddy bear. “This toy is sewn from an old coat collar in 2014. I sewed it to order,” she wrote.

Similar images to the original post can be viewed here on Yamkovskaia’s webpage on Bearpile, an online marketplace for cuddly toys.

Below is a screenshot of the site:

US based fact-checking website Snopes has also written about another image featuring Yamkovskaia’s lifelike creations here.

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