Fake: Video of Woolly Mammoth in 1943
The Claim
The video below depicts a woolly mammoth sighting in 1943.
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Emerging story
In September 2020, users on social media began recirculating the video, claiming it shows a woolly mammoth in Siberia in 1943. One Instagram post was viewed 145,998 times as of September 22, 2020.
Users claim the video was taken by Holger Hildebrand, a member and official photographer of the Nazi party who was captured by the Red Army at the Battle of Stalingrad and marched towards Siberia. During that journey, he ostensibly took footage of a woolly mammoth.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation found that the caption to the video is false. The video was originally shared in 2013 on a YouTube page called “Weird Wild Spooky,” although it has since been taken down.
The woolly mammoth’s last mainland population lived in the Siberian Peninsula before going extinct nearly 10,000 years ago.
For that reason alone, it seems impossible that the footage in the video depicts a woolly mammoth.
Further, we conducted a reverse image search using screenshots from the video and found it was borrowed from a 2001 BBC computer-generated documentary called Walking With Beasts - Mammoth Journey.
Beginning around 19:05, the clip of the CGI woolly mammoth is cropped and digitally manipulated for the viral video claimed to be taken during WWII.
