Does a video of a large herd of cats show "animals feeling the earthquake before the earthquake," prior to the February 6, 2023, earthquake in Turkey? No, that's not true. The second part of the video is footage that was shot in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and was posted in November 2022, three months before the devastating natural disaster hit Turkey and Syria.
The claim appeared in a video published on Instagram on February 7, 2023. It opened with this caption over the video:
Animals feeling the earthquake before the earthquake
This is what the Instagram post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Wed Feb 8 18:27:11 2023 UTC)
There are two different clips in the video posted on Instagram that show a large number of cats running on a street at night. This fact check is focusing on the second clip. That one was filmed in Saudi Arabia, not Turkey or Syria where a devastating natural disaster hit on February 6, 2023.
The second clip is taken from a video that went viral in 2022 and was posted by a person who feeds stray cats on the streets of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. An article posted on Yahoo.com on November 20, 2022, titled "Dozens of Jeddah Street Cats Approach Good Samaritan Coming to Feed Them," notes that the cats had "glowing" eyes. The footage matches the second clip in the video posted on Instagram as this screenshot shows:
(Source: Yahoo.com screenshot taken on Wed Feb 8 19:33:45 2023 UTC)
The video was originally 11 seconds long and shows the cats with glowing eyes on a sidewalk with a large mural on the wall behind them. The cats with glowing eyes are running on the sidewalk in both videos. The mural is also seen in the clip in the video posted on Instagram as this screenshot shows:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Wed Feb 8 18:45:29 2023 UTC)
Times Now posted the video on their YouTube page on November 23, 2022, with the caption, "Why Cats With Glowing Eyes Filled The Streets Of Jeddah."
Lead Stories has not been able to identify the first clip in the video.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about the February 6, 2023, earthquake can be found here.
