I saw this “rare” butterfly on Facebook.
Hm. Something about that looks a little Photoshopped. Is it the pot antennae? Iffy. I followed the butterfly from Facebook to Snopes.
I thought it would be airing its wings on page one of Snopes, but Snopes must not be in the butterfly de-bunking business.
Instead, I found out that:
NYC Mayor Bloomberg was not denied a second slice of pizza by a disgruntled restaurateur. That’s sad, because I kind of believed that story on Twitter.
Sarah Palin did not call for an invasion of the Czech Republic because the Boston Bombers were from Chechnya. I totally bought that one too.
Both those stories came from The Daily Currant so I’ve added them to my blogroll (soon to be shifted to Feedly before Google reader leaves.)
Never found the butterfly, though.
3 responses to “A Long-overdue Visit to Snopes”
So fake.
This was an entry in a photo effects contest, by “Lacenflanl”, entitled “Wings of Peace”. The topic of the contest was “If Hippies Ruled 4”. This photo won 7th place. Contest submissions at http://www.worth1000.com/contests/16313/contest. The “artist” has a portfolio that can be reached by clicking through from the photo.
The photo is found at least five other sites on the internet, all of which had no attribution, but I do believe this one to be the original, because if you have a bunch of special effects photographers and artists submitting to a contest, you KNOW they will call foul if a submission is not original.
(And, uh, yeah, it’s “shopped” because that was the nature of the contest, and those antennae belong on a moth, not a butterfly.)
Marcia – I couldn’t be sure. They find new species all the time.
~~silk – oh bless you. I hunted for that very thing for half an hour!