Upon a reverse image search of the picture, we found the same image on Pinterest, an image sharing platform, with the caption, ‘Elephant Mountain mirekis’ Metal Poster Print – Mirekis | Displate’.
We then searched on Google with the keyword ‘Elephant Mountain mirekis’ and found the photo on 500px, an online photo-sharing platform, where the artist ‘Mirekis’ had uploaded the image in 2018. The tags used in the photo were “surreal”, “photomanipulation”, “fantasy”, among others.
We found the image on his Facebook page in the album ‘Animals manipulation’ and the photo was uploaded on 11 December 2018.
Speaking to fact-checking website Snopes in 2018, Mirekis said he used two images from Pixabay and Wikimedia to create the image using editing software.
He said, “Elephant’s Mountain” was a composite of several different images. The foreground of the image, which shows a field and a few scattered bushes, was taken from a of a Rocca Malatestiana, a fortress on a mountain range in…