Fake story of a kitten lying on the remains of its mother, who came to the shelter to see her baby

As if there weren’t enough tragic tales circulating in the news, a fake story is currently being shared on social media. It’s obviously intended to amass an extensive audience and make people cry, exploiting their emotions and seeking attention. 

“The kitten is lying on the remains of its mother, who came to the shelter to see her baby. But, the mother cat died because she was poisoned by some evil individuals. You will never guess that she died looking for food for her baby, who continues to nestle against his dead mother.” 

The photo and caption were posted by a user called “Nina Palchyk”. Her post received hundreds of likes and more than 10,000 shares.

This is manipulation. And it’s cyclical. Using TinEye, we discovered that the image was first posted in 2019, possibly even earlier. Since then, it has been periodically recycled on various trash sites and social media, in different parts of the world, especially in Asia. The story is always the same.

This conclusion can be reached by deduction. To do this, you need to ask yourself just a couple of questions:

— How long does it take for an animal’s body to decompose?

— How old is the kitten?

The story that people are spreading so widely isn’t logical. The answers to the questions above show the inconsistencies in the story. It’s most likely that the animal died some time ago, that its corpse was consumed by some other animals, and that the kitten was not necessarily its offspring.

We asked Nadiya Pushkarova, Candidate of Biological Sciences, to explain more:

“These are indeed the remains of a feline, most likely a cat. But it’s hard to say whether it’s the mother of the kitten. There is, of course, an attachment, but it’s more based on scent recognition. I’m not sure that the degree of decomposition and time would allow the kitten to recognize its mother’s scent. I assume that the corpse was eaten by other animals. That’s why it looks like this after such a short period of time.”

Nadiya cannot say how the animal died, maybe it was poisoned. But after that, a lot of other things happened to the cat, and it probably took some time