An image posted on Facebook in South Africa and Nigeria shows a fish with human legs where the tail should be.
“This is the picture of a woman who turned to a fish on her wedding day,” the caption reads.
The post has been shared nearly 5,000 times. The image is clearly a bad photoshop job, and people can’t be turned into fish.
But where does the original photo of the fish come from?
Using a reverse image search, Africa Check discovered that the original, unaltered photo is now some 12 years old.
It was first published in a 2007 report by the San Francisco Chronicle, a newspaper based in the US state of California, under the headline “A ‘wolf of the sea’ washes up near Sea Ranch”.
The article shows the fish – without human legs – and quotes an expert as identifying it as a long-nose lancetfish.
“They are wild looking," Carrie Wilson of the US Department of Fish and Game is quoted as saying in the 2007 article. “I've see these every so often. They show up on the beach very rarely.”
No, the photo doesn’t show a woman turned into a fish on her wedding day. It’s a manipulated image, taken from a 2007 news report. – Sam Ancer
“This is the picture of a woman who turned to a fish on her wedding day,” the caption reads.
The post has been shared nearly 5,000 times. The image is clearly a bad photoshop job, and people can’t be turned into fish.
But where does the original photo of the fish come from?
Long-nose lancetfish
Using a reverse image search, Africa Check discovered that the original, unaltered photo is now some 12 years old.
It was first published in a 2007 report by the San Francisco Chronicle, a newspaper based in the US state of California, under the headline “A ‘wolf of the sea’ washes up near Sea Ranch”.
The article shows the fish – without human legs – and quotes an expert as identifying it as a long-nose lancetfish.
“They are wild looking," Carrie Wilson of the US Department of Fish and Game is quoted as saying in the 2007 article. “I've see these every so often. They show up on the beach very rarely.”
No, the photo doesn’t show a woman turned into a fish on her wedding day. It’s a manipulated image, taken from a 2007 news report. – Sam Ancer
For publishers: what to do if your post is rated false
A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”, “altered”, “partly false” or “missing context”. This could have serious consequences. What do you do?
Click on our guide for the steps you should follow.
Publishers guideAfrica Check teams up with Facebook
Africa Check is a partner in Meta's third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media.
The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it.
You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how.
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