FACT CHECK: ‘Baby Albino Bat’ Seen in Viral Photos is Not Real! Here’s the Truth…

Social media posts about strange and adorable creatures often gain a lot of attention from users Therefore, it is common for users to share images of such amazing and sometimes even mysterious creatures. However, sometimes the photos/videos of such unusual creatures are a hoax and people mistake them to be real.

Here, we are going to see a collection of images claimed to be of a baby Albino bat by Social Media users and shared widely around the world. Factcrescendo Sri Lanka investigation revealed that these were yet another case of miscaptioned images.

Social Media Posts:

Facebook page called “Awesome” shared 4 photos of a person holding something that has been referred by the poster as “Baby Albino Bat” as seen below.

Facebook | Archived Facebook | Archived

Many users had identified that these artificial images and were not of a genuine White Albino bat. Still the post has got more than 12000 shares. We noticed several other posts which had been shared thousands of times with the same caption.

However, this was not the first time these posts have gone viral and below are a few examples of such posts with similar claims that went viral last year.

Fact Check

A reverse image search of the images revealed that the photo collection was attributed to an artist and seller of handmade wool toys called Anna Yastanna, based in Omsk, Russia as seen below from her Facebook and Instagram posts.

Instagram FB

As per Yastanna’s profile on Etsy, great attention to detail is given to each of these handmade, cute and realistic toys made using different wool felting techniques.

We checked the sold items in her Etsy profile and noticed “Felted White Little Bat/Albino Bat/ Plush Bat Toy” details which displayed the same toy shown in the above posts.

However this item was listed as sold out on Etsy and below is the description provided by Yastanna on this life like toy creature.

Etsy.com | Archived

We noticed several other websites which had listed the Baby Albino Vampire Plushie toy, using the same viral images as seen here & here.

However, all of these were scams made using the images of from Yastanna’s products. In reply to these, Yastanna had posted on her Instagram in 2020 stating that she sells her works ONLY on Etsy and all other stores and stuff are scammers.

Instagram | Archived

Albino animals are rare creatures and white albino bats are a one of the very rare species as well. Here is another video about a rare Albino bat in Korea.

Also Read:

Did An Albino Sambar In The Seethwaka Wetlands? Here Is What We Found Out.

Fact Check: Four eyed mythical poseable doll interpreted as a real animal (Sinhala)

Conclusion

From our investigation it is clear that the collection of images getting shared as “Baby Albino Bat” is falsely captioned and is not related to any real life white Albino bat.

The images are of a soft toy made by a Russian Artist from Omsk, Anna Yastanna. Anna is a seller of such handmade soft toys made of wool.

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