A photograph shows a palm-sized rabbit.
A photograph shows a palm-sized rabbit.
Cute animal photographs rivalÂ fake newsÂ andÂ prayer requestsÂ in their potential to go viral on social media â€” a phenomenon that theÂ Baby AnimalsÂ Twitter account, which has over one million followers, take advantage of. One of the accountâ€™s most popular images (which was posted in August 2016 and, as of this writing, is pinned to the top of their feed) purportedly shows an adorable bunny rabbit: It may be cute, but itâ€™s not a real bunny.Â Larger versions of this image make two things clear: That this is a doll crafted with some sort of felt, and that the viral images were cropped to remove a watermark. The original image, which has since been deleted, featured the name of an account on the Chinese social media web site Weibo and the URL of the image: The Weibo user who created this doll (the watermark on several of the images reads â€œMochimochiâ€) has posted several similar felt creatures on their account and sells the dolls via their Weibo shop: This isnâ€™t the first time that a plush toy has been mistaken for a real animal. People have also mistakenly shared images of dolls along with the false claims that they showed a baby platypus, two baby owls, and a mystical marbled faurk. Â
"bunny" AND "toy" AND "palm-sized"