Fennec Hare, World’s Most Endangered Creature - Hoax

Story:

Once found throughout the Iperian Steppe, but now critically endangered, the Fennec hare relies on its acute auditory sense to evade predators and detect its favored prey, the D. carota beetle.

Other Versions

1. Save the Fennec Hare: he’s adorable and endangered.

2. This cute little thing is a Fennec Hare and they are endangered.

3. The birth of one of the world’s rarest creatures, the Fennec Hare, was celebrated this week at North Korea’s Pyongyang People’s Zoo. The Fennec Hare is on the brink of extinction with only a handful remaining in captivity.

Analysis:

The picture messages claim to show a rare and world’s most endangered creature called Fennec Hare. The picture is a photoshop creation, and there is no such creature called Fennec Hare, so the claims are simply hoax.

The source of all these messages goes back to an article on Zooborns.com with a title ‘Endangered Fennec Hare Born at Korea Zoo‘, which was published on April 01, 2009. But not many people realized that the article was basically an April fools day prank and the picture of the creature shown was not real, but a photoshop creation. The picture was taken from a photo effects contest of Worth1000.com, where it was titled as ‘kitty bitty bunny‘, and backed 1st place in ‘Sickening Cute 4‘ category. As you can see in the image section below, this so called Fennec Hare is just a photoshopped picture of a Kitten.

The fabricated story on Zooborns appears to be inspired from the Fennec Fox, which looks somewhat similar. Fennec foxes are small nocturnal animals found in the Sahara of North Africa, and their unusually large ears serve to dissipate heat. The video below shows a cute looking baby Fennec Fox.

The bottom line is that there is no such endangered creature called Fennec Hare. So like we always say, do not believe in everything that you see or read online. Do your research!