By now, the video has been seen tens of millions of times. The internet is enamored; how can you not be?
The short clip shows a group of dogs in China who were purportedly captured to be eaten but escaped and made the long journey home as a merry band of misfits – including a golden retriever, an injured German shepherd, and a brave corgi leading the way.
The problem: It’s not real. Though the original clip is authentic, showing seven dogs wandering down the side of a highway in northeastern Jilin province, Chinese state media has since debunked the narrative of their escape and journey home.
Still, the imagined tale has taken on a life of its own. Social media users have likened it to the 1993 Disney movie “Homeward Bound.” AI-generated spinoffs ensued: movie posters of the seven dogs, a film trailer depicting their thrilling escape, and even images of them reuniting with their overjoyed owners.
The phenomenon illustrates how misinformation can multiply after a viral moment, spreading what can seem to be harmless narratives that are made harder to verify in the age of AI. In this case, some of the false storylines included racist stereotypes.
Amid the doom and gloom of news coverage, audiences are hungry for wholesome feel-good content like animal videos.
They offer an escape but their popularity also encourages social media creators to invent or embellish content for clicks, said TJ Thomson, associate professor of digital media at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.
“Folks are trying to capitalize on existing viral content or trends,” he said. “Attention is money online and on social media. So, the more attention you get, the more engagement you get.”
The video of the seven dogs was initially taken on March 15 by a man driving through a remote part of Jilin province, according to China’s state-backed Cover News.
He posted it online, speculating that the group may have escaped from a dog transport vehicle – though he later clarified that he hadn’t seen any such escape.
The video blew up on Chinese social media, becoming a top trending topic and reaching more than 90 million views on Douyin and Weibo, two major platforms – with the video quickly spawning countless memes and group-chat discussions. Then it went global, appearing on TikTok, X, Instagram, and multiple international media outlets.
Theories flourished that the dogs could have been stolen. Social media users pointed to how several dogs walked close to the German shepherd, constantly turning to look at it – evidence, they claimed, of the pack protecting an injured member.
Others fell in love with the small corgi walking at the front of the group, at times circling back like a courageous leader making sure nobody got left behind.
The truth is far less romantic.
All of the dogs belonged to villagers who lived a few kilometers from the highway where they were filmed, according to the Chinese state-owned City Evening News, which tracked down the owners. The German shepherd had been in heat, which is why other dogs were drawn to it, the owners said.
Most dogs in the village were free-roaming and often disappeared for a day or two during their heat cycle, Cover News reported. The seven dogs in question have since returned home, with the German shepherd now restrained on a leash until its heat cycle ends.
There are likely a few reasons the video went so viral, said Thomson. Animal videos tap into our “childlike nature” and our desire to care for small creatures. Animals offer a neutral canvas to express universal themes like community, belonging, and loneliness, he added. And this kind of wholesome content offers respite from endless headlines of wars and disasters.
Just look at how much the internet embraced Moo Deng the baby pygmy hippo in Thailand, or Punch the monkey in a Japanese zoo. Both drew huge crowds of real-life visitors after going viral.
Neither Punch nor Moo Deng has a fake story. But even true events can spark inaccurate narratives – such as overwhelming concern online that Punch was being bullied by other monkeys, even as his zookeepers tried to explain that these interactions are normal in the world of Japanese macaques, and that Punch is simply learning the hierarchy of his new troop.
And even when the original clips of viral moments are authentic, they’re increasingly used as a launching point for embellished narratives and AI content – to capture an invested audience.
In one recent instance, a bus driver in Australia rescued a koala from an outdoor light pole, putting it on his bus before calling a koala rescue charity. The incident happened at night, and there was no one on the bus, but the original video sparked a wave of fake content.
Some showed AI-generated clips of the koala ambling on board to join commuters – none of which was real.
The motives behind fake content vary, but the most compelling one for many content creators is clicks and traffic they can ultimately monetize on social media.
“This sort of content can prove incredibly popular and can go viral. And so that does mean that it can be quite an effective way to build up an account’s numbers very quickly,” said Tama Leaver, professor of internet studies at Curtin University in Perth, Australia.
To some people, it may not matter if that cute viral animal video is real. But that turns problematic when viewers accept what they’re seeing without question – especially when it comes to more serious topics.
For example, Leaver says there’s an “enormous amount” of fake footage from the Iran war that some people may accept as real.
“When we lower our expectations and admit that we may not care in one space, it does mean perhaps our critical skills won’t be as sharp in the other ones,” he said.
This incident of the seven dogs may seem trivial or harmless. But there are still dangers here – for instance, the false narratives that the dogs were being transported to a meat factory perpetuate a negative stereotype about Chinese people eating dogs, which historically has fueled racism against Chinese people overseas.
Even now, with Chinese people in the West facing heightened xenophobia after the Covid-19 pandemic, videos like this can further influence how outsiders view China, said Thomson.
And as more AI slop populates the internet, misinformation will likely continue to spread – challenging our perception of truth and trust.
Even lighthearted content like this risks “poisoning or muddying the information well… when you don’t really know what to trust, who to trust, can you believe your eyes,” Thomson said.
“That leaves you in a scary state to be in.”
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