Over the previous week, one social media guru has been making claims about wildlife leaving Yellowstone Nationwide Park in hordes. In line with a sequence of movies from Scott Whitehead, a self-proclaimed “animal knowledgeable,” the “grizzle bears” have lastly had it with the park, and so they’re taking to the highway together with various extra animal species in massive numbers, baffling scientists.
Whitehead’s bear clip went viral, gaining hundreds of thousands of views, and inflicting mayhem throughout the web as different social media pages posted supposed pictures of tons of of bears heading for the exits. The subject started trending on Google, and a few followers of the development expressed oncern that the animals sensed an impending eruption from Yellowstone’s notorious supervolcano.
Is America’s oldest nationwide park about to blow? Hardly. In line with the Nationwide Park Service and different wildlife specialists, the movies and pictures are a hoax—one half mislabeled footage, one half AI “satire,” and 100% bunk.
Linda Veress, spokesperson for the park service, advised ABC that she suspected the movies have been AI-generated and “satirical in nature.”
“Wildlife shouldn’t be leaving Yellowstone Nationwide Park in massive numbers,” mentioned Veress. “This rumor is fake.” The USGS says present ranges of volcanic exercise within the park are regular.
Invoice Hamilton, a wildlife biologist at Washington and Lee College, recommended to the community that the video was completely pretend primarily based on bear conduct, since bears don’t normally congregate in massive numbers except there’s a big meals supply close by.
After researching Whitehead’s video, Snopes got here to a unique conclusion: Whereas the clip is a real video, it’s not from Yellowstone, nor was it captured in July of 2025. It doesn’t even present the proper of bear: After the positioning carried out a sequence of reverse imaging assessments, they traced the video again to Bear Nation USA, a drive-through wildlife park primarily based in South Dakota. Along with creating a house for black bears—not grizzlies, because the video claims—the wildlife park additionally incorporates wolves, badgers, bighorn sheep, buffaloes, mountain lions, and various different species. (Another follow-up posts from unrelated websites, like this one displaying tons of of bears sprawled out on a Yellowstone highway, do seem like AI-generated.)
Snopes notes that Whitehead typically posts false data on-line. Just a few days earlier than the bear fiasco, he posted a video claiming that mountain lions have been migrating from Yellowstone to Utah, utilizing a video of a cougar shot in Patagonia.
Hamilton mentioned that whereas this sort of misinformation might be entertaining, it additionally contributes to misunderstandings about animal conduct.
In Yellowstone, animals usually are not constrained to the park boundary, which frequently implies that they arrive and go, relying on elements like time of the 12 months, and meals sources. Whereas many species take to the highway within the winter to chase down tasty meals, they’re much less prone to migrate in the summertime.
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