A video authentically shows a monkey rescuing a dog from floodwaters.
The 10-second clip allegedly shows a rainy village scene featuring a monkey wading in water and pulling a dog to the top of a log.
For example, an X post (archived) featured the video with a Thai-language text caption translating to English as, “If we’re gonna make it, we’ve gotta make it together, right?” That clip, shared Sept. 27, made the rounds at the same time Thai authorities were reporting about fatalities from flooding following an unusually heavy rainfall. (The same user posted longer, authentic-appearing videos allegedly showing snakes, dogs, puppies and a cow during flooding.)
That X post received millions of views, as did an Instagram post (archived) displaying the clip with the onscreen caption, “Viral: Monkey Grabs A Dog And Climbs Onto A Floating Log Amid Raging Floodwaters.” Other users widely shared the video on Facebook (archived), TikTok (archived) and X (archived). Some specifically claimed a person recorded the video in Thailand.
Some commenters praised the monkey for its alleged act of kindness, while others said they believed someone created the clip using artificial intelligence.
Moreover, reverse image search results matching single frames from the video indicated the oldest post (archived) hosting it resided on the Thai-language Facebook page เรื่องร้อนสตอรี่, a title that means Hot Story in English. That post and others on the page were labeled “AI content.”
We emailed the Facebook page’s owner to ask whether they created the video with AI or shared it from someone else’s post and will update this article if we receive further details.
Examining the video
The video exhibits natural-seeming camera movements and zooms, and realistic visuals of rain falling onto the water in a flooded village. At the beginning, the outline of the clip’s frame faintly indicates the camera’s point of view may be from behind a window frame, a car window or similar setup, providing the impression of realism.
The signs of fakery far outweigh any indicators of realism, however. For example, we downloaded the video and used Adobe Premiere video-editing software to determine the clip’s exact duration. The clip runs at 24 frames per second and lasts exactly 10 seconds and zero addtional frames in length — a common AI-generated video duration. We didn’t find a longer version of the clip that would support the alternative explanation that it might have been an authentic video trimmed down to a precise 10 seconds.
The audio track features the sound of falling rain, followed by unrealistic sounds of the dog plopping down on the log and making whining noises that don’t appear to match the visuals. Also, at the moment of the plop, the dog’s front right paw lands on a pile of debris that doesn’t appear to move. (Bear in mind that anyone can add inauthentic audio to a video with authentic visuals, so fake audio alone does not automatically mean the whole video is fake.)
Perhaps one of the key indicators of AI generation or other visual fakery is visible in the animals’ movements just before the monkey releases the dog. From the 5-second mark to the 6-second mark, the monkey appears to pick up the dog for the last time to fully situate it on the log. An unnatural video artifact appears at that moment — at about the 00:05:13 mark — when the dog’s front right leg raises up and off of the log. For a single frame, the leg appears as a thinner, sharper representation of itself as the vertical black shape in the middle of the yellow circle in the montage below. The vertical black shape doesn’t appear in the preceding or subsequent frames:
(Ches Vichet via Facebook, Snopes illustration)
On the subject of odd visuals, several blue objects appear to show up only after the camera zooms in to show the closer view of the two animals. For example, one small light-blue item resembling a hair tie appears to either surface or otherwise inexplicably appear on the left side of the debris pile just after the 7-second mark.
(Ches Vichet via Facebook, Snopes illustration)
AI detection tools and fake animal rescue videos
Scanning the video with AI detection tools produced inconsistent results. The tools we used included Hive’s AI-generated & deepfake content detection, Nvidia’s synthetic video detector, Pangram’s AI image detector (screenshots only), Tencent’s Zhuque AI image and video detector and ZeroGPT’s AI video detector.
Snopes doesn’t rely solely on AI detection tools, which vary in reliability. Instead, we consider the tools’ results as individual data points among many when judging the authenticity of images, text and videos.
During our research process, we made note of numerous other videos allegedly showing animals rescuing other animals (or people) from water. Those clips generally exhibited more-obvious visual indicators of AI, such as inconsistent blurring and smoothness, that the monkey-saving-dog video didn’t.
Also, we considered the possibility that the “rescue” may have been staged like other examples of fake animal rescue videos hosted online. Kerry Burton-Galley, a spokesperson for the Lady Freethinker organization, which states as its purpose to “end cruelty for all beings,” told us by email that most staged animal rescue content involves humans seeming to rescue animals, adding “but it’s certainly not unheard of for videos to feature two or more animals, including one animal apparently coming to another’s aid.” She continued:
AI-generated animal content is becoming increasingly troubling and will likely pose an even greater challenge as the technology advances. While no real animal is directly harmed in creating a fully AI-generated video, realistic fake rescue content can make it increasingly difficult for people to distinguish genuine rescues from fabricated ones. That can erode public trust and potentially affect donations and support for legitimate rescue organizations doing lifesaving work.
For further reading, we previously reported the facts about a video showing an elephant throwing grass on its head.
