This viral photo does not show the world's heaviest baby - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
January 17, 2023
A photo of a doctor carrying a new born baby who seems pretty heavy for a newborn is being shared on social media. A description of the post states the baby is the heaviest baby born naturally and weighs 8.6 KG, and finds a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Let’s fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: Photo of a baby who holds the Guinness World record for the World’s heaviest baby.
Fact: According to Guinness World Records, the world record for the heaviest baby born in this world belongs to a boy born on 19 January 1879 in Ohio, USA. The boy weighed 9.98 Kg during his birth. The viral photo is not of this baby boy. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To cross-check if the heaviest baby born in the world is the baby in the photo,  we looked for such a record on the official website of the Guinness World Records. According to the website, a baby boy born in 1879 holds the record for world’s heaviest baby. ‘Giantess Anna Bates (née Swan) (Canada, b. 6 August 1846; d. 5 August 1888), who measured 241.3 cm (7 ft 11 in), gave birth to a boy weighing 9.98 kg (22 lb) and measuring 71.12 centimetres (28 in) at her home in Seville, Ohio, USA, on 19 January 1879.’ The boy died 11 hours after his birth.
On reverse image search on the viral photo, we found a few news articles (here and here) from 2009 which reported the birth of an 8.7 Kg baby in Indonesia. This is almost close to the claimed weight of the baby in the viral photo but does not show the same baby as in the viral photo. The reverse image search led us to older social media posts with similar claims (here and here) as this viral post but did not lead us to any conclusive evidence about the photo.
To sum up, this viral photo does not show the world’s heaviest baby.