Hyper-realistic silicon sculpture falsely portrayed as a dangerous animal spotted in Darbhanga, Bihar - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
June 3, 2021
A video is being shared on social media claiming that a dangerous animal creature has fallen from the sky near Darbhanga in Bihar. The video shares few visuals of an alleged creepy creature. This post claims that the animal had fallen to the Earth during Cyclone Yaas. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Visuals of a dangerous animal creature spotted at Darbhanga in Bihar.
Fact: The creature in the video is not real. It is a hyper-realistic silicon sculpture made by an Italian artist – ‘Laira Maganuco’. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
On reverse image search of the screenshots in the video, similar photos of the alleged creature are found in a Facebook post by Laira Maganuco on 03 October 2018. The description of the photo states, ‘single piece silicone armadillo hybrid’. The alleged creature in the video is a hyper-realistic silicon sculpture created by an Italy-based Hyper Realism Silicon Sculptor, Laira Maganuco.  She had also shared a video related to this sculpture on her Facebook page.
Laira Maganuco has posted the same photo on her Instagram handle with the description – ‘armadillo hybrid’. Information regarding the ‘real’ Armadillos can be found on the ‘National Geographic’ website.
The same sculpture is also for sale on the ‘Etsy’ website. In the product description, it can be read that it has been ‘carved entirely by hand in acetic silicone paste’. Laira Maganuco has shared multiple other images of silicon sculptures on her Instagram handle. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the video shared in the post shows a hyper-realistic silicon sculpture, not a real one.
To sum it up, a hyper-realistic silicon sculpture falsely portrayed as a dangerous animal spotted at Darbhanga in Bihar.