Did a dog fall into a Florida canal and almost drown before a dolphin rescued it, as pictured in this story? No, that's not true: The image purportedly of a brown dog riding on the back of a dolphin is from a short film titled "Zeus and Roxanne," which was created by a Dutch filmmaker. There was a doberman named Turbo who in 2011 fell into a canal and was rescued hours later after neighbors noticed two dolphins making a stir about it. While the true tale of what happened to Turbo is a good dog-gone story, much of what is said in this viral article published eight years later is fishy click bait.
The misleading version of Turbo's dolphin encounter is an article (archived here) published by healthyfoodhouse.com on August 19, 2019 under the title "Dog Falls Into Canal And Starts To Drown, Until The Group of Dolphins Comes To Saves Him". It opened:
Dolphins are one of the smartest animal species on Earth, and their brain size compared to the average of their body size is second only to humans.These amazing creatures have been known to imitate human actions, solve complex problems, follow recipes, and respond positively to television by expressing curiosity when moving images were displayed on a device. Scientists have found that they can create personalized whistles that act as names for individual members of a pod.
This is what social media users saw:
The image of the dog riding on the dolphin's back made a lot of people click to read the full story of the rescue, with the idea that it depicted what happened. But that's not the dog, the dolphin, or anything close to what happened to Turbo. It's a screen grab from this short film titled "Zeus and Roxanne." It runs just six minutes and you can watch it here:
The misleading 2019 article gets some details of the 2011 watery drama right, but so much is wrong that we rated it false. Instead of wasting your time with it, we suggest you meet the real Turbo in this 2011 local news report:
NewsGuard, a company that uses trained journalist to rank the reliability of websites, describes healthyfoodhouse.com as:
A diet and lifestyle site that promotes potentially dangerous and unproven natural health remedies.
According to NewsGuard the site does not maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability. Read their full assessment here.
We wrote about healthyfoodhouse.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:
- Fake News: Neuroscientists Did NOT Say Your Forgetfulness Is A Sign Of Extraordinary Intelligence
- Fake News: Scientists Have NOT Found That Intelligence Is Passed From Mothers, Not From Fathers
- Inaccurate News: MORE Than Two Whales Found Dead, NOT Only In Germany, NOT All Stomachs Full Of Plastic And Car Parts
