No, this video has circulated in media reports about a sun bear captured in Malaysia

This article is more than one year old.
Published on February 25, 2020 at 04:20
2 min read
By AFP Philippines

A video has been viewed millions of times in multiple YouTube and Facebook posts alongside a claim it shows a 'sigbin', a mythical bloodsucking creature in Philippine folklore, filmed in the Philippines. The claim is false; the video has previously circulated in reports about a hairless sun bear that was captured in Borneo, an island in Malaysia.

This 52-second video was published on YouTube on March 14, 2017. It has since been viewed more than three million times.

Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:

Screenshot of YouTube video

The video’s Tagalog-language caption translates to English as: “Sigbin captured in Surigao city”.

“Sigbin” is a blood-sucking creature in Philippine mythology, often described as a cross between a dog and a kangaroo, that hunts at night for the hearts of infants.

Surigao is a city in Mindanao Island, south of the Philippines.

The video was also shared here and here on Facebook, alongside a similar claim.

The claim is false; the video has circulated in media reports of a hairless sun bear found in Bintangor, on the Malaysian island of Borneo in 2015.

Reverse image searches of keyframes extracted from the video in the misleading posts using online verification tool InVID found this higher resolution video uploaded on YouTube. It was published by an account for the English-language Malay newspaper The Borneo Post, dated April 6, 2015.

The caption states, in part: “The sun bear is in a makeshift cage awaiting transport to Matang Wildlife Centre for rehabilitation.”

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading posts (L) and The Borneo Post video (R):

Screenshot comparison

The video was also embedded in this April 2, 2015 report by The Borneo Post, headlined “Months-long search for hairless ‘sun bear’ over”.

The report reads, in part: “BINTANGOR: Months after it was first sighted and chased away into the jungle, the ‘strange creature’ at the centre of the video clip that went viral earlier this year was finally found and captured by oil palm plantation workers today.

“According to the plantation manager who requested anonymity, the animal which is suspected to be a sick and hairless sun bear, was discovered by the workers at about 7am within the same area where it was first spotted on Jan 30 this year.”

A subsequent The Borneo Post report published on May 20, 2015 states the sun bear died of late-stage cancer.

Sun bears are a bear species found in the forests of Southeast Asia. They are listed as an endangered species, often killed for their bile, which has been used in traditional medicine for hundreds of years.

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