Does video show lion attack two trophy hunters? Fact Check

A video claims to show the moment two trophy hunters posing with a dead lion were attacked by another lion.

FALSE

The video shows the two hunters posing with a dead lion only for a second lion to sneak up on them from behind. The two hunters and the lion then disappear off-camera when a gunshot is heard. The lion the reappears on screen.

Many instances of the video claim to show an instance of revenge or “karma”.

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The video first surfaced online in 2016, and it is unknown who made the video. We do know, however, that it is fake, since we were able to locate both the image of the dead lion and the video of the live one from their original sources.

The dead lion next to which the two hunters are posing was actually taken in 2013, and the original photo can be seen below.

It appears the lion was simply digitally imposed onto another background where two people acted out the scene of running away from the attacking lion.

As for the attacking lion, that took a bit longer to find, but we believe it comes from this Getty stock video footage that shows a lion jumping onto a platform placed behind the camera before jumping back down into view. We’ve included some screenshots below to show the similarities between the two lions. It appears the creators of the fake video have made a few edits, including making it appear like the lion’s mouth is more open than it is.

As such, there is no way the video can be real, and we rank it false.