It has pet lovers barking mad.
Earlier this week, the world was moved by the heartwarming story of seven courageous canines who escaped China’s meat trade and embarked on an incredible journey home. There was just one problem: It was completely fake.
The clip — which has been viewed millions of times on Chinese social media — showed the wag-nificent seven trekking home walking in close formation along a highway in China’s northeastern Jilin province.
At one point, the pack of escapees — who included a Golden Retriever, labradors and Pekingese — rallied around a German Shepherd that appeared to be injured. Another shot showed a corgi, the alleged leader of the pack, seemingly circling back to ensure that no pups had been left behind.
This moving footage spawned theories on social media that the tight-knit pack had fled a truck bound for a slaughterhouse with some suggesting that they’d even chewed through a cage.
They then trekked ten miles home over two days like something out of “Homeward Bound,” before being reunited with the grateful owners, per the online sources.
While the footage is real, the associated feel-good tale has since been debunked by Chinese state media, which reported that, in actuality, the pups just lived several miles away, CNN reported.
The allegedly injured German Shepherd, meanwhile, was actually in heat, which was why the other dogs were attracted to it, hence why they appeared to have a united front.
According to Cover News, most dogs were fairly free range and often vanished for up to two days during the rut.
These dogs eventually made their way back to their villages on their own, whereupon the frisky German Shepherd was was put on a leash until its heat cycle concludes.
By the time the truth came out, the clip had blown up online.
It reportedly generating over 90 million views on Douyin and Weibo, eventually catching fire on TikTok and Instagram, and inspired myriad memes and forum discussions online.
It also perhaps proved that there is a craving for “wholesome” animal content amid the bleak news cycle.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the recent spate of AI-generated wildlife clips, many of which depict unlikely interspecies play dates.
In one uber-viral clip, with hundreds of millions of views, a gang of rabbits can be seen jumping on a trampoline in tandem.
