Is this an image depicting the world`s smallest bird? Find out the truth...

Nature photography has become very common among people with the development of modern technologies and commonly available cameras. Hence many individuals draw an interest towards this field and post their unique snapshots on social media platforms. However, we notice edited images as well as various artworks getting shared conceived as nature photography. This is one of our fact checks related to such a misleading image, which went viral on social media, claiming to be the image of the world's smallest bird.

Social Media Posts

A Facebook user posted a photo of a tiny bird along with the following narrative.

“This is the hummingbird,” Topaz”, the smallest bird on earth”

Facebook | Archived

We noticed that such posts had been spread locally as well as among international audiences.

We decided to carry out an investigation to find out whether this image is really depicting the smallest bird in the world.

Fact Check

First, we directed our attention about the media reports related with world smallest bird. We were able to find out that the world's smallest bird did in fact belong to the humming bird family , however, the name of this species is, “Bee Humming Bird” and length of its body is around one and half inches and weighs around 2 grams. International media report that these birds are misunderstood as bees by people and live mainly in countries like Cuba. The size of the egg of a bee hummingbird is around the size of a coffee bean.

Web | Archived

Reports about the Bee Humming Bird as the world’s smallest bird can be read from here, here and here.

Guinness World Record book also mentions that Bee Humming Bird is the world's smallest bird as seen below.

Guinness World Records | Archived

We did a reverse image search regarding the viral social media image and were able to find that the image is not related to a real bird and it's actually an artwork done by an Indian artist named as “Nayan” using paper cutting techniques.

This is his Instagram post about his work and related background.

Instagram

Many other artworks, done by Nayan using papers can be found from his Instagram page as well. We also noticed that these artworks done by Nayan and his assistant, Vaishali Chudasama, are put for sale and can be reached from here . Archived link here.

We also searched about the hummingbird named “Topaz” in viral social media posts. That hummingbird is larger than the bee hummingbird despite the fact they belong to the same family. The length of Topaz hummingbird is around 21-23 centimeters in length and 11-18 grams in weight. The report about this can be reached from here and here.

Ebird.org

Here is our Sinhala language fact checks for the same claim

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Conclusion

According to our investigation, we were able to find out that the image viral on social media does not depict the world's smallest bird. The image is a photograph of a paper artwork model of a Crimson Topaz hummingbird done by an Indian artist named “Nayan.” “Topaz” hummingbird is not the world's smallest bird, however the smallest bird is also of hummingbird family and is called “Bee Hummingbird”