September 2026 social media posts shared an authentic story about a chimpanzee rescuing a zookeeper from a faulty electrical cabinet.
In September 2026, some Facebook accounts shared a rumor of a chimpanzee saving a person’s life by pulling them from a faulty electrical cabinet.
For example, one Facebook page claimed (archived) a chimpanzee left its enclosure to pull a zookeeper away from an electrical cabinet that shocked him and knocked him to the ground. The post included an image of what appeared to be two security camera screenshots showing the chimpanzee pulling the zookeeper away from the cabinet and a rescue team running towards the zookeeper while the chimpanzee watched.
The story as shared by the page read in full:
A chimpanzee pulled a zookeeper away from a faulty electrical cabinet, then sat nearby until the rescue team arrived.
The keeper had entered a service area beside the chimpanzee habitat to inspect a control box that had stopped working. Moments after he opened it, an electrical fault knocked him to the ground.
He was still conscious, but badly disoriented and unable to move away from the cabinet.
A chimpanzee watching from the nearby access doorway immediately became agitated. Instead of retreating, it entered the service yard, grabbed the back of the keeper’s jacket and began pulling.
The chimpanzee dragged him several feet across the concrete until they were safely away from the loose cable. Then it released his clothing and moved back toward the habitat entrance.
Other zoo workers noticed the emergency on a security monitor and called the rescue team. Less than a minute later, three responders came running through the service gate with medical equipment.
By then, the keeper had regained enough strength to sit upright. The chimpanzee remained beside the habitat doorway, quietly watching as help approached.
Staff later said the animal had never been trained to perform a rescue. It simply saw someone it knew lying in danger—and did the only thing it could think of.
The rescue team treated the keeper, but the chimpanzee was the one who first pulled him out of harm’s way.
The tale was posted to Facebook groups (archived) and also appeared on YouTube (archived). A reader sent Snopes an email asking if the claim was true.
There is no credible evidence supporting the story of the chimpanzee’s rescue. The image included in the post was generated using artificial intelligence, and it is likely the story is AI-generated, too. Therefore, we’ve rated this claim false.
Snopes first looked for evidence supporting the story on various search engines.
We searched for “chimpanzee pulled zookeeper from electrical cabinet” (archived) and “zookeeper saved by chimpanzee” (archived) on Google, and made similar searches (archived) on DuckDuckGo (archived), Bing (archived) and Yahoo (archived). None of the searches yielded any reporting of the incident by credible news organizations, press releases, blog posts from a zoo or any other type of primary evidence of the incident, such as the security footage that allegedly captured it.
Reverse image searches through Google (archived) and TinEye (archived) did not yield any such results either. The few instances of the image the search engines found online were all from Facebook posts retelling the story.
If the story was real, it’s very unlikely there would be no reporting, discussion or firsthand accounts available online. The Facebook posts do not identify the people involved, the name of the zoo or the location of the zoo; many fabricated stories are intentionally vague on such details to make it more difficult to debunk them.
The post embedded above, posted by the Facebook page Animal Rescue Stories, appeared to be the original source of the claim. Snopes reached out to the Animal Rescue Stories page over Facebook Messenger to ask whether the page was the source of the story and to request credible evidence supporting the story if it had any. We’ll update this story if and when we receive a reply answering our questions.
Evidence of AI generation
The Animal Rescue Stories post also included an “AI content” label. Facebook will automatically apply the “AI content” label when the content was created or modified by Meta AI, or when it detects AI signals within the content (such as hidden watermarks). Facebook users can also add the “AI content” label to their posts themselves.
In this particular case, the label could mean the attached image, the written story or both were generated by artificial intelligence tools.
This label aligns with the about section on Animal Rescue Stories’ Facebook page. The about reads:
Emotional stories of animal rescue and hope.
Spreading kindness, protecting wildlife and natureThe stories you are watching are recreated with AI, but the video aims to spread values of compassion, education, and animal protection.
That disclaimer reads as if it only applies to video content, and not to the images or the written stories. Due to this uncertainty, Snopes also asked the Animal Rescue Stories page via Messenger if it generated the story itself using AI. The page didn’t reply prior to publishing.
The two screenshots from the security footage have easily identifiable inconsistencies that wouldn’t be possible in reality. Although the visible timestamps suggests the screenshots were taken less than a minute apart, there are significantly more objects lining the left wall in the second screenshot than there are in the first. The first screenshot depicts enough space between the right wall and the fence to fit a dumpster and a small vehicle, while the second screenshot depicts significantly less space and different objects in the same area. Even the size of the entrance to the chimpanzee exhibit differs between the two screenshots.
Pangram, a reputable AI text detection tool, determined that the text of the story was 100% AI-generated.
Let us note here: These types of AI detection tools are fallible. Snopes cautions people against using them for definitive answers on media’s authenticity without supporting evidence.
The fictional story about the chimpanzee helping the zookeeper resembled glurge, which Dictionary.com defines as “stories, often sent by email, that are supposed to be true and uplifting, but which are often fabricated and sentimental.”
This particular story is similar to other AI-generated stories of chimpanzees purportedly saving zookeepers’ lives.
For further reading, Snopes fact-checked a similar AI-generated story and image claiming a gorilla cried out for help when its favorite caretaker collapsed.
