An alien looking strange Arthropods found in Texas ? Find out the facts

People are always fascinated and curious to find out facts about strange and alien looking creatures living on our planet. Social media users also tend to share photos of such creatures without giving much thought about their authenticity.

Recently, we came across such a post, when a photo of an imaginary creature, seen in Sci-Fi got viral as a real life to Arthropod.

Let’s look at the claims first.

Social Media Posts

Social media posts carrying a photo of a strange looking creature, with a head resembling that of a spider along with a long tail, was shared among many users. The posts further claimed that these harmless, tropical arthropods who live in trees had probably arrived in Texas on ships carrying logs and have adapted very well here to the hot climate as seen below.

“I recommend if you find one at home, treat it well If you find this species of arthropod in your house do not kill it!!!

His bite is not poisonous, they are very affectionate, it feeds on mice and small rodents, it goes away on its own. They are tropical animals, which live on trees, probably arrived in Texas on ships carrying logs and have also adapted very well here for the hot climate”

Facebook | Archived

While many users had identified these to be satirical posts, some of the users had requested details about this species.

Here are some of the many instances of this image going viral on Facebook

Fact Check

We did keyword search on mainstream media, science magazines and related websites to check whether such an unusual creature had been reported before. Yet we did not come across any evidence to suggest the existence of such an arthropod.

When we carried out a reverse image search, we came across many images like the one posted online, relating to fictional species, mainly in relation to science fiction movies.

This fictional species was named as a “Facehugger” and can be found in many of the famous science fiction movies. The Facehugger made its first appearance in the film Alien. Below is a scene from Alien, the 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott.

Here is another scene with this creature from the sci-fi film Alien vs. Predator (2004)

Google image search from the term, “Facehugger” also shows many images similar to the one being shared widely on social media. Archived

We noticed that animal models resembling the image shown on social media were displayed for sale on the internet as seen here and here.

Similar images have been viral in Sri Lanka for a few years as well and Factcrescendo Sinhala team had contacted Sri Lankan environmentalist Dr.Jagath Gunawardena, to get additional details about these weird claims. Dr Jagath also had confirmed that there weren’t any such living beings as shown in the viral posts and those were fictional or artificially created objects.

Our fact check in Sinhala can be read here.

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Conclusion

According to our investigation, we can conclude that the image claiming to be a strange looking Arthropod found in Texas is not a real living species but depicts an artificially created or digitally manipulated image of a fictional animal seen in many sci-fi movies called the “facehugger”