Viral child-and-porcupine video shared as Bangladesh was filmed in Sri Lanka

DHAKA STREAM - A fact-check by Stream found that the footage was actually filmed in Sri Lanka.

The video, which shows a child carrying a dark-coloured cat while a porcupine follows closely behind along a narrow path through a paddy field, has been shared in multiple Facebook posts claiming it depicts a rural scene in Bangladesh.

The same claim also appeared in a social media post by the Indian newspaper The Telegraph. Both the post's caption and on-screen text identified the child as Bangladeshi, and the post included the hashtag #Bangladesh.

To verify the claim, Stream conducted a reverse image search using key frames from the video. The search led to a post written in Sinhala, Sri Lanka's official language, with the caption: "ගමක අසිරිය සංහිදියාව හා සුන්දර ලමාවිය," which translates to: "The beauty of the village, harmony and a beautiful childhood."

Further investigation traced the earliest known upload of the video to a Facebook account named Prabath Silva, which posted it on 11 June. The original Sinhala caption read, "අක්කා එක්ක කුබුරු යන ඉත්තෑ මල්ලි," meaning: "Little porcupine brother going to the paddy field with his elder sister."

The same account contains several other videos featuring the child and the porcupine. One video, posted on 14 June, shows the porcupine being bottle-fed, while another, uploaded on 20 June, captures the child interacting with the animal. All of the posts carry captions in Sinhala.

The profile information for the account lists Polonnaruwa, a district in Sri Lanka's North Central Province, as its location, further supporting the video's Sri Lankan origin.

Stream contacted Prabath Silva via Facebook for comment on the video's context, but had not received a response at the time of publication.