Golden Eagle Snatches Kid

About

Golden Eagle Snatches Kid is a video purportedly showing a large golden eagle attempting to carry away a toddler. Shortly after its release in December 2012, the video was revealed to be a hoax created with CGI techniques.

Origin

YouTuber MrNuclearCat uploaded a video titled “Golden Eagle Snatches Kid” on December 18th, 2012, which showed a large eagle swooping down on a small child and attempting to carry him away before dropping him several feet to the ground (shown below). Within 48 hours, the video accumulated over 18 million views and 21,000 comments.

Spread

On December 19th, the video was submitted by Redditor FrostByte122 to the /r/WTF^[1] subreddit and by Redditor ThatGThang to the /r/videos^[2] subreddit. Within 24 hours, FrostByte’s post received over 18,500 upvotes and ThatGThang’s post received over 41,800 up votes. The same day, YouTuber Cyatek and YouTuber AnimalWire uploaded videos which argued that the video was faked, citing a frame where the eagle’s shadow suddenly appeared and the movement of the child after being let go by the eagle (shown below).

Also on December 19th, Redditor reddirter submitted an image macro titled “Misunderstood Eagle” to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[12] subreddit, featuring a painting of a crying bald eagle with the caption “Tries to show kid the world / accused of trying to kill kid” (shown below). Within the next 24 hours, the post received over 10,600 up votes and 100 comments.

Hoax Revealed

On December 19th, a post was published on Montreal’s Centre NAD^[4] animation and design school blog, which revealed that the video had been faked by students Normand Archambault, Loïc Mireault and Félix Marquis-Poulin in a 3D animation and digital design production simulation workshop class. That day, the hoax was subsequently reported on by various news sites, including the BBC,^[5]ABC News,^[6] The Telegraph,^[7] The Daily Mail,^[8] The Guardian^[9] and NPR.^[10] Also on December 19th, Redditor Cactrot911 submitted a post titled “How I felt when I found out the video of the eagle stealing the baby was fake” to the /r/funny^[11] subreddit, which featured an image macro of an eagle carrying a baby captioned with the catchphrase “I want to believe” (shown below). Within the next 24 hours, the post received over 8,800 up votes and 290 comments.

Notable Examples

Parody Twitter Accounts

On December 19th, the @hideyobabies Twitter account was created, which tweeted jokes referencing the baby-snatching eagle and the Antoine Dodson Bed Intruder video. A similar Twitter feed @snatchyobabies was created the same day, which tweeted from the perspective of the baby-snatching eagle.