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Creatures, Myths & Legends

Weird 'creature' in India turns out to be a hoax

By T.K. Randall
September 11, 2020 · Comment icon 28 comments

Image Credit: Facebook / Laira Maganuco
Photographs of a very strange creature have generated quite a stir on social media over the last few days.
With four legs, a tail, an armored back and a human-like face, this bizarre looking cryptoozological 'creature' first appeared on social media around two weeks ago when farmers in the Indian state of Rajasthan were warned not to go out into the fields alone in case they came across it.

Referred to by some as 'Dipda', the peculiar beast was described as "very dangerous".

A glance back through the archives also revealed that the creature had previously been featured in a similar news story back in 2018, this time in India's Jagittala district, Telangana.
So what exactly is this thing and where did it come from ?

The answer, as it turns out, is that the 'creature' is actually a silicone sculpture created by Italian artist Laira Maganuco who reportedly describes the piece as an 'armadillo hybrid'.

The photographs, it seems, had been erroneously picked up as evidence of a real creature.

It just goes to show how easily something like this can became a social media phenomenon.

Source: The Quint | Comments (28)




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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #19 Posted by johncbdg 4 years ago
If that is real then the devil is back with the Gargoyle King and that is a worker Gargoyle...
Comment icon #20 Posted by Orphalesion 4 years ago
Not gonna lie when I first saw a photo of the face of that "mother bird" statue by Keisuke Aisawa (the one some jerk appropriated and misused for that Momo crap) I was kinda disturbed for a few moments and some part of my mind almost believed it to be a genuine supernatural creature. It looked too tangible and lifelike to be CGI ora photo edit.  Of course just a Google search told me what it really was, and the whole statue looked a lot less "realistic" than the face did by itself. But it shows you what people with the right amount of skill and creativity can create. 
Comment icon #21 Posted by jethrofloyd 4 years ago
7 Real Life Forms That People Once Believed Were Hoaxes   1. Platypus -The platypus is probably the most famous case of an animal that was, at one time, believed to have been a hoax. 2. Okapi - For European and American researchers who were investigating the wildlife of Central Africa at the turn of the 20th century, the okapi was, for some time, a cryptid. 3. Pelican - Scientists had good reason to doubt the reports from sailors who had spotted the birds in the New World. 4. Microorganizms - Imagine that you're a 17th-century scientist and someone comes and tells you that there are microscop... [More]
Comment icon #22 Posted by the13bats 4 years ago
Mother bird had a cartoonish look to me. You wanna be disturbed by art? Many years ago my buddy john rip who was an advid hobby photographer emailed me this, it was presented kind of creepypasta style that it was a human dog hybrid, at first jarring but i could tell by the setting it was static and placed there, as in it didnt crawl there, it upset a lot of people, it took me a while to track it down, like i said this was decades back. Its the work of Artist Patricia Piccinini. She has other stuff and some very jarring.
Comment icon #23 Posted by Orphalesion 4 years ago
Yeah I saw that years ago on a google search. It's very well done, but I agree that it's also clearly a statue. Same with Mother Bird when you see the whole thing (even when you see a photo where it isn't flanked by grinning exhibition visitors) I think what helped selling Mother Bird to me was that they cropped the image to just the head and that also caused the background to look like somebody's run-down apartment, it looked more convincing to me. As to which is more disturbing. Yeah the human dog (I think that's what it is) looks ugly, but it's also clearly harmless. She just wants to lie t... [More]
Comment icon #24 Posted by the13bats 4 years ago
Heres another, This was used with lots of creepypasta the most known that made up russian sleep deprivation experiment. It bugged me because the creature looked so darn familiar, I have an even less cropped version on my hd but in context of the creepypasta this thing took on a huge life of its own, Then it dawned on my im a huge halloween fan i knew this prop, in person its not as creepy. https://halloweenmanufacturer.fandom.com/wiki/Spazm Now the fun part this props picture still to this day fools people.
Comment icon #25 Posted by the13bats 4 years ago
And lets not forget this cuddly rascal,
Comment icon #26 Posted by Orphalesion 4 years ago
Another excellent example of how photo manipulation can make something a lot more creepy that it really is, yeah.
Comment icon #27 Posted by the13bats 4 years ago
Hope you been doing well...  
Comment icon #28 Posted by Orphalesion 4 years ago
Hey thanks for asking. Hope you are reasonably well too. Not really doing all that great, but who can really say these days that they are "doing good"? I'm healthy and safe, which is already a lot.


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