Claim: A video shows a leopard attacking a pet dog inside a house in Balakot, in Mansehra District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.
Fact: The video surfaced on social media in December 2021 and is from Sundar Bazar Municipality in Lamjung district in Nepal.
Fact or Fiction?
On 8 October 2022, Facebook user Sheikh Sohaib shared a video claiming that it shows home security footage of a leopard attacking a pet dog in a courtyard in Balakot, Pakistan.
“بالاکوٹ کے کسی علاقے میں ایک گھر کے پالتو کتے کا چیتے نے شکار کر دیا cctv کیمرے کی ریکارڈنگ [CCTV camera recording of a domestic pet dog being hunted by a leopard in an area of Balakot],” he captioned the post.
The claim was shared here, here, here and here, among others.
Soch Fact Check found the claim to be misleading after searching the image with Google Lens. The search led us to an article published on 26 December 2021 by Hindustan Times titled, “Leopard jumps over gate of house, takes away pet dog. Watch.”
The article states that the video was shared by Twitter user Parveen Kaswan, IFS (@ParveenKaswan) from Indian Foreign Service. He didn’t share when and where the video was taken.
Soch Fact Check also found the same video on YouTube posted on 14 December 2021 by Animal World claiming it’s from Kathmandu, while another YouTube account Nima G. Sherpa, who posted the video on the same date, said it’s from Chitwan, Nepal.
Fact-checking website Newschecker ascertained in December 2021 that the viral video is from Nepal. They spoke to Nepal’s popular national daily Kantipur’s Lamung correspondent, Aash Gurung, who confirmed the incident took place in Sundar Bazar Municipality in Lamjung district, Gandaki Province, Nepal.
He also told them that the incidents of leopards entering human settlements and preying on domestic animals are not new in the district.
Virality
According to a CrowdTangle analysis conducted by Soch Fact Check, the search term, “بالاکوٹ کانشیاں میں ایک گھر کے پالتو کتے کا چیتے نے شکار کر دیا cctv کیمرے کی ریکارڈنگ”, turned up 21 posts which received 1,245 interactions over the 30-day period leading up to 27 October 2022.
While the search term “بالاکوٹ کے کسی علاقے میں ایک گھر کے پالتو کتے کا چیتے نے شکار کر دیا”, turned up two posts which received two interactions over the same period.
The analysis revealed that Balakot News Studio HD’s post is performing 7.43x better than other similar posts on Facebook, with 136 likes, 187 shares and 14,000 views. The oldest post dates back to 30 September 2022.
Soch Fact Check also used Facebook’s search feature to check the virality of the video with the search term, “بالاکوٹ کے کسی علاقے میں ایک گھر کے پالتو کتے کا چیتے نے شکار کر دیا cctv کیمرے کی ریکارڈنگ” and found at least six posts carrying the viral claim: here, here, here, here and here.
Conclusion: The viral video of a leopard attacking a dog is from Nepal not Pakistan.