False: Viral ‘flying dog’ image from Typhoon Yagi was digitally manipulated
In early September, a viral image on the internet showed a small animal resembling a dog flying through the air. Many posts claimed that the wind blew away the dog during Typhoon Yagi.
The Yagi was considered the most powerful storm to hit the South China Sea in the past 30 years, according to ReliefWeb, a humanitarian information service provided by a branch of the United Nations. The northern provinces of Vietnam and Hainan, the southernmost province of China, experienced severe wind and flood damages between Sept. 6 and 9.
Media outlets around the world covered Yagi’s impact. Several news organizations, including Australian broadcaster SkyNews, Austrian tabloid Heute, Hong Kong’s Sing Tao newspaper, and Guang Ming Daily from Malaysia, featured the image of the flying dog in their articles about the typhoon.
Many social media posts in various languages across platforms like X, Threads, TikTok, Sohu, Baidu’s Baijiahao and Facebook, also shared the image as an example of Yagi’s devastation, each gaining thousands of likes and shares.
However, this image is unrelated to any destruction caused by typhoons this year. The silhouette of the dog was taken from an online image posted at least eight years ago. It was digitally added to the image showing a cloudy outdoor background.
Image of a “dog blown away by a strong wind”
Annie Lab discovered a TikTok video by Vietnamese technology influencer Minh Ngọc discussing this viral image as potential misinformation. In the video, a screenshot of a Facebook post appears halfway through, showing the same animal with a different sky and trees in the background.
A reverse image search using the cropped screenshot of the Facebook post led to an article published on Dec. 18, 2016, by a Vietnamese website. Another Facebook post from Dec. 17, 2016, also included the same photo. The animal’s mid-air posture is identical to the one in the viral image except for the background, indicating that it was digitally altered into an unrelated photo or video of a windy outdoor area.
Image of a “man hanging on a tree amid strong wind”
Another image often seen alongside the dog image in Yagi-related posts and news shows a person clinging to a tree in strong winds.
However, this image was not taken this year either; it is a popular Chinese internet meme frequently used in posts about typhoons or strong winds.
Annie Lab found a set of stickers for messaging apps uploaded to a Chinese gaming website in June 2019 that included one made with an identical image.
This sticker appeared in several Chinese articles published in 2019, 2021, and 2023 that provided information on tropical cyclones; the image appeared to have been used as an illustration that adds humor to those articles.
While Annie Lab cannot determine the origin of both images, they were uploaded to the internet years before Typhoon Yagi and, therefore, do not reflect its powerful impact.
