A video of a prop dragon is falsely being shared as a dead dragon found in Nagaland. - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
March 4, 2024
A video clip circulating on social media purports to show a deceased dragon discovered in Nagaland’s Phek district. Let’s fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: Viral video displays a deceased dragon discovered in Nagaland.
Fact: The dragon seen in the viral video is actually a prop dragon created for a TV show called Cuarto Milenio by an artist named Juan Villa Herrero. Therefore, the claim made in the post is rated as False.
To verify the claim made in the viral video, we executed a reverse image search on some of its keyframes. This search led us to a similar video uploaded on YouTube on 13 September 2016, titled “Juan Villa Herrero artist creates fake dragon.”
The description of this video explains that Juan Villa Herrero produces props for television and film. He made props for a TV show named Cuarto Milenio.
Based on this clue, further research was conducted on the internet, leading us to Juan Villa‘s website. The ‘About’ section mentions that he operates a company called Prometeo Escultura, which creates props for television, theatre, and movies.
Items such as fictitious figures, props, fossil and archaeological replicas, and museum and exhibition figures are made using diverse materials; this description available on the website aligns with the description in the YouTube video.
On this website, we also found a link to Juan Villa’s YouTube channel, which includes a black-and-white video of a dragon identical to the one in the viral video. According to the clip’s description, the dragon is a prop made for the Spanish television show Cuarto Milenio.
Juan’s YouTube channel also showcases how this fake dragon was made for Cuarto Milenio.
Juan himself confirmed that the dragon in the viral video was one of his creations, stating that it was a “creation for the Spanish television program Cuarto Milenio,” which hosts episodes on topics such as science, crime, and the paranormal, as quoted by AFP Fact check
To sum up, the ‘dragon’ depicted in the viral video is actually a prop made for a Spanish television show, not a real dragon discovered in Nagaland.