Sri Lankan video of porcupine cub and girl stirs the internet

A heartwarming video of a little girl walking on a narrow footpath through a paddy field, carrying a small cat and accompanied by a porcupine cub, recently garnered significant attention on social media networks. This video, which captured the hearts of millions of users worldwide, began circulating widely across various social media accounts, including Facebook, claiming it took place in a rural setting in Bangladesh.

Even the renowned newspaper 'The Telegraph' introduced the girl as a Bangladeshi national on its social media pages, implying that these scenes belonged to Bangladesh and using the hashtag '#Bangladesh'.

However, an investigation conducted by 'Stream', a fact-checking organization operating from Bangladesh, revealed that this video was not filmed in Bangladesh, but in Sri Lanka. During a reverse image search conducted online using key frames from the video, they were able to find a post written in Sinhala, the official language of Sri Lanka. The caption of that post, stating "The beauty of a village, harmony, and beautiful childhood," helped confirm these facts.

Further investigating this matter, the fact-checking team discovered that the video was originally uploaded to the internet by a Facebook account named 'Prabath Silva'. This series of scenes, uploaded to that account on June 11th, had a Sinhala caption that read "Porcupine brother going to the paddy field with sister." Further confirming the background of this video, the account information of the Facebook account owner confirmed that he is a resident of Polonnaruwa District, which belongs to the North Central Province of Sri Lanka.

Upon observing that Facebook account, the fact-checkers were able to find several other videos showing the relationship between the girl and the porcupine cub.

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