A post accompanying a video of a plant-like creature releasing smoke with a sound similar to cork popping is being widely shared with a claim, that the video shows Oodhu Paavai, a medicinal plant that only grows in dense rainforests, blowing its pollen with a sound. Let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of Oodhu Paavai, a medicinal plant blowing its pollen with a sound.
Fact: The video is actually a digital sound art created by a 3D artist called Luke Penry. He also placed the work for an auction on Foundation.app. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
On closer inspection of the video, we can spot a watermark that reads ‘LUKE PENRY EXR’. Taking a cue from this, Google search with relevant keywords led us to a Twitter handle with the name Luke Perny, which shared the same video on 17 September 2021, with a caption ‘New Sound ON’. The bio section of the Twitter profile describes him as a 3D artist. There are many such digital sound art videos on his timeline.
Further, he put the same art work for auction on Foundation.app, a platform for live auctions of digital art. The information section of the artwork identifies it as looping animation and the title of the work reads Jungle Pipes. Further, in the info section, the artist highlights that ‘the video became the source of much confusion in India, when various channels were reposting it as the “Oodhu Paavai – A medicinal plant on the verge of extinction, only growing in dense rainforests, blowing its pollen with sound’.
He further added that an IFS officer shared the same video, which led the video to go viral on the internet. Further search led us to the IFS officer’s tweet which shared the same video. He shared the video with a similar claim as in the viral post calling it Oodhu Paavai, a medicinal plant that only grows in dense rainforest, blowing its pollen with a sound. The tweet was later deleted by the IFS officer.
However, the video is digital art and not a real plant that produces sounds. In fact on his Twitter timeline, Luke Penry shared a video of a Tamil man debunking the same video, as it went viral with a claim that the video shows an ancient herb on the verge of extinction.
Further, we could not find any information about a medicinal plant with the name Oodhu Paavai as claimed in the post. This proves that the viral video is actually a digital sound art but not of a real plant.
To sum it up, video of digital art is passed off as Oodhu Paavai, a medicinal plant blowing its pollen with a sound.
