Are these animal rescue videos for real?

Brut America

These viral rescue videos may be staged, but the suffering of the animals is all too real.   Here’s what you need to know before sharing these “fake” rescue videos …

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00:00Sadly, these videos are all set up purely for entertainment, so these are wild animals

00:25that have been held in captivity and made to perform as props for these shocking YouTube

00:32videos. They show clear signs of physical injuries even before the attack, so cuts,

00:38blood and wounds, damage to their wings and clipped feathers. This is a worrying new craze,

00:47it's a huge phenomenon. One single video depicting the rescue of a monitor lizard from the attack

00:54of a python had been viewed over 100 million times.

01:14You may think that these videos look real, but there are obvious signs that they're not.

01:19They're clearly staged videos because the quality of the filming, they're all in the same setting,

01:24so they may be on a sandy riverbank for example. The fact that a man will, over and over again,

01:31just come across this situation where there's a predator in a prey situation,

01:37that they're there to rescue them. The chances of this situation happening in real life,

01:41it's not credible. Often the videos will be shot multiple times, which will likely cause severe

01:48psychological trauma and injury to these animals, and potentially fatalities as well. So although

01:55the animals are eventually rescued, they clearly show signs of distress and panic. You will find

02:01distressing images of panicked monkeys desperately trying to break free from the grips of a python.

02:08The raptors and birds of prey that are depicted as predators in the videos often have clipped wings

02:15and they land awkwardly, and they don't exhibit natural predator behavior. But along with the

02:21animal welfare concerns, there are also conservation concerns, because often there are critically

02:27endangered and endangered species that can be seen in these videos that have been used as prey and

02:32predator, such as the Siamese crocodile and also the lar gibbon. The popularity of these videos is

02:39also of great concern. Of the 50 most viewed videos, they have been watched over 130 million

02:46times. These animals are being exploited purely for entertainment. So since writing to YouTube,

02:52and since the publication of our findings, some of the videos have been removed and taken down,

02:58but the vast majority are still available and publicly viewable today. So we're asking the

03:03public not to to be aware of these fake animal rescue videos, to be aware that they are fake

03:10rescue videos that are exploiting animals. We are asking the public not to share or like these videos

03:16and to share our social media content to spread the word that these are fake

03:21rescues that exploit animals.

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