Fact Check: Video showing dog and puppies stuck in mud is not from Wayanad landslide
The devastating landslide in Kerala’s Wayanad has left over 300 people dead and several missing. Heavy rains triggered the landslide, devastating Kerala’s hilly region for the second time after 2019. This shows that the unchecked constructions, tourist resorts, connecting roads, tunnels, and quarrying activities continued despite continuous warnings.
dog stuck
The devastating landslide in Kerala’s Wayanad has left over 300 people dead and several missing. Heavy rains triggered the landslide, devastating Kerala’s hilly region for the second time after 2019. This shows that the unchecked constructions, tourist resorts, connecting roads, tunnels, and quarrying activities continued despite continuous warnings.
Amidst this, a video of a dog stuck in the mud is going viral with the claim that the dog, along with its two puppies, was stuck in the mud during the landslide and rescued by the rescue team. The video is shared with the caption: “Big salute to rescue team....A dog and her two puppies rescued from landslide in Wayanad, Kerala”
Fact check :
The claim is Misleading. Though the video is from Kerala, it is not recent. The incident of dog rescue did not happen during the Wayanad landslide.
When we performed a Google reverse image search of the extracted keyframes, we found a Reddit post published in October 2023.
It was also published on a website named Newsflare.com. According to the website, the video was filmed on October 15, 2021, on National Highway 966, Palakkad, India. The description goes: “A dog and her two puppies were rescued from a landslide recently in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Locals discovered the mother dog buried up to her neck behind a shop in the Palakkad district on October 15 after heavy rains caused tonnes of earth to slide down a mountainside, two days earlier. An animal rescuer arrived at the scene and dug around the stricken mother to free her. Rescuers then found her two puppies in the mud nearby. Locals said they believed the dogs must have been trapped there for two days without food or water. The animals were said to be making a full recovery.”
According to an article published in The New Indian Express, a dog and two pups survived a minor landslide after lying covered with mud behind a shop for three days following heavy rains at Kanjirathani near Kumaranelloor on the Palakkad–Malappuram border and were finally rescued by locals.
According to the News Minute, the dog and her two puppies were buried below the mud in a minor landslide in Palakkad district. They were rescued three days after the landslide took place in the border village of Palakkad-Malappuram district near Kanjirathani of Kumaranelloor. The family took the help of an animal rescuer to get the dogs out of the mud.