A bull elephant seal rests on the sand at Drakes Beach in Inverness, California on December 13, 2019 ( AFP / Philip Pacheco)

Altered elephant seal photo circulates online

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on April 14, 2022 at 22:27
  • 1 min read
  • By AFP USA

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Facebook posts shared thousands of times appear to show an image of an elephant seal facing backward with a wrinkle that resembles a frowning mouth under its eyes. But the photographer who took the original shot said that the picture of the giant sea creature has been altered.

"The worst angle for a seal," says text accompanying the photo in an April 12, 2022 Facebook post.

Screenshot of a Facebook post taken on April 14, 2022

More examples of the claim appeared on Facebook here and here.

Searching the phrase "elephant seal facing backward" on Google led to this article published on January 20, 2020.

The story features a December 29, 2019 Instagram post by photographer Justin Hofman with a similar image, captioned: "Southern elephant seals can dive down over a mile deep and hold their breath for over an hour to hunt their deep-sea prey."

Hofman confirmed that he shot the original image, and said an altered version of it was circulating on social media.

"I took this photo in about 2010 or 2011 in Antarctica," he told AFP. "You can see that they moved the wrinkle on the nose to the middle of the forehead to make it look more like a face."

Side-by-side comparison of Justin Hofman's photo (left) and the altered version circulating online

AFP has fact checked other altered images here and here.

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