Social media has been obsessed with videos of our wild beings, and their clips often go viral online, sometimes for their utterly adorable acts, unexpected survival tactics, and surprising intellect.And this time, just as the monsoon has set in, several videos showing animals surviving the water have been going viral.One of those is a video that shows an elephant saving a tiger from getting washed away by floods.
Photo: @GUMMALLALAKSHM3/ X
Viral video shows an elephant saving a tiger from being washed away in floods
A clip showing a Sumatran elephant wading through raging floodwaters to help a tiger being swept away has been doing the rounds on social media, as heavy monsoon rains batter parts of India. The video caption describes it as “a rare and touching incident” captured during flash floods in Sumatra, and it first went viral on Indonesian social media.
Fact check: Is the video real or not
Despite how convincing it looks, the footage is not real. The video “has been generated using the help of Artificial Intelligence” and does not show real visuals at all. The video appears to have an unnaturally smoothed texture in the water and an overly glossy sheen across the frame, which reveals the suspense, as AI tools still fail to hide such effects.Tempo.co reported that detection software found “a 93.7 percent probability that the visual was AI-generated,” with additional tools confirming similar results. Their fact-check also noted that the tiger’s stripes blurred and shifted unnaturally as it moved, which is a common flaw in AI-rendered animal fur.
It is an old clip with a new look
This isn’t the first time the video has circulated. It first appeared online in November 2025, around the time Cyclone Senyar triggered deadly flooding across Aceh and North and West Sumatra. The AI-generated clip appears to have piggybacked on that real tragedy and has now resurfaced again eight months later during India’s own monsoon season, recontextualised as if it were breaking news.
