Fact Check: Papuan Fisherman Didn't Catch Giant Axolotl Sea Creature (2024)

Claim:

Photos shared on social media authentically showed a huge sea creature caught by a fisherman.

Rating:

Starting in July 2024, a set of images purportedly showing giant axolotl-like creatures both in a fisherman's boat and underwater circulated on social media. The most popular post featuring the images that Snopes has been able to identify was made on Facebook on July 30, 2024, and, at the time of this writing, had received around 9,600 reactions and 3,300 comments.

The caption of that post read:

(Facebook account Jarred Jermaine)

Although Snopes has so far been unable to identify the creator of the images, they appear to have begun to circulate on social media on or before July 23, 2024, when the earliest securely datable posts featuring all or some of the images were made on X, Facebook, and Instagram.

In a caption originally written in Japanese and translated using Google Translate, one X post made that day compared the creatures shown in the images to a mutated aquatic creature featured in Prime Video's 2024 "Fallout" series, writing: "I'm totally a Gulper from the drama Fallout 😂."

Snopes found no evidence that the images shown in the posts authentically depicted a real animal caught by a fisherman. Using Google's reverse-image search tool, we found no authentic source for the above images.Nor did we find any news outlets reporting on it, or any photographer claiming to have taken this picture.

The creatures shown in the posts closely resembled axolotls, a critically endangered type of salamander, but some features of the images and posts suggest that these were not real axolotl specimens.

First, although the creatures in the images appear roughly the same size as the humans shown sitting next to them, real axolotls are significantly smaller than a human. According to both the San Diego Zoo and the Los Angeles Zoo, it is possible for axolotls to reach a maximum length of around 18 inches, but they are typically shorter than a foot in length, reaching between 7 and 11 inches at maturity.

Second, axolotls in the wild are only found in a small number of freshwater lakes in Mexico's state of Jalisco. They cannot live in the ocean, and there is no evidence the animals have ever been found in either Papua, the Indonesian province, or in the nation of Papua New Guinea, as several of the social media posts sharing the images claimed. A Google search for "Papua" and "axolotl" returned no results connecting axolotls to Papua beyond one Facebook post sharing the same images investigated here.

In addition to the creatures' size and the fact that wild axolotls are found only in freshwater lakes in one Mexican state, there were other signs that the images were not authentic photos, which many internet users pointed out in comments left on posts featuring the images.

One aspect pointed out by multiple commenters was the human-like hands visible in one of the three images of the axolotl-like creature, which were seemingly complete with fingernails. One commenter wrote: "AI generated, the axolotl's "hand" on the first picture looks like a human's." Another left a comment reading: "Deffo AI. Look at the left ones 'hands'..."

(Facebook account Jarred Jermaine)

Another clue that the images were not authentic was the garbled text on the T-shirts of the men visible in two of the photos. Bizarre hands and gibberish text are both common hallmarks of images created using artificial intelligence (AI) software.

We also ran the images through AI image detectors AI or Not and Hive, both of which indicated that the images had a high likelihood of having been AI-generated.

Because the images are inconsistent with basic facts about axolotls and display classic signs of having been AI-generated, we rate the claim that they authentically depict a creature captured by a fisherman as "Fake."

Snopes has previously investigated similar claims about images allegedly showing bizarrely large animals, including a giant centipede purportedly found in Australia and an eerily large octopus that social media posts claimed had washed up on an Indonesian beach.

Sources:

"Axolotl." Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens, https://lazoo.org/explore-your-zoo/our-animals/amphibians/axolotl/. Accessed 7 Aug. 2024.

Axolotl | San Diego Zoo Animals & Plants. https://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/axolotl. Accessed 7 Aug. 2024.

Ibrahim, Nur. "This Giant Octopus Was Photographed on the Coast of Indonesia?" Snopes, 5 June 2024, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/giant-octopus-coast-indonesia/.

Lee, David Emery, Jessica. "4 Tips for Spotting AI-Generated Pics." Snopes, 16 Apr. 2023, https://www.snopes.com//articles/464595/artificial-intelligence-media-literacy/.

Wrona, Aleksandra. "Giant Centipede Found in Australia?" Snopes, 9 July 2024, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/giant-centipede-arthropleura-video/.