Social media users claimed a video shared to X and TikTok in September 2024 showed a genuine "baby peacock" with fluffy, white feathers and big, black eyes.
One X post containing the clip had amassed more than 57,000 views as of this writing, while another user shared the video with the caption: "This gorgeous baby peacock made my heart smile."
However, the footage was fake. The same video was posted to X on at least two other occasions in September 2024, where users noted it was generated using artificial intelligence.
(X/Snopes Compilation)
The video contained six short clips of the purported "baby peacock," and there were subtle differences in each of them, such as the number of toes on display, the color and shape of parts of its plume, and the existence or not of a second plume on its head. In some of the short clips, as seen in this article's feature image, the peacock even had a different number of toes on each foot. All this proved the video was fake.
Hive Moderation, a website that detects AI-generated media, concluded there was a 98.5% chance the footage contained "AI-generated or deepfake content."
(Hive Moderation AI-Generated Content Detection)
A similar video, which had garnered more than 4.3 million views on X as of this writing, showed a dark-blue and black-hued version of the "baby peacock." The X post noted this clip was also created with AI. The X user on the right of the first screenshot above also shared the footage of the blue and black "baby peacock" and, likewise, acknowledged it was made using AI.
There are three types of peafowl: green, Congo, and Indian, the last being the most recognized in zoos.
"The Indian peacock has some of the brightest feathers, but the peahen is a drab, mottled brown in comparison. The male needs his bright feathers to attract a mate, and the female needs to be able to blend in with the bushes so that predators cannot see her while she is incubating her eggs," the zoo wrote.
As Snopes reported in 2023, the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Gardens wrote that peachicks are also a "mottled brown" color when they are around 2 months old.
For example, the Children's Zoo at Walton Hall Gardens in England posted the below photo of a peachick in 2019:
The Montgomery Zoo in Alabama also posted a photo of an off-white peachick to its Instagram account in May 2023:
Neither of the above two images resembled the fake baby peacock depicted in the AI-generated video in question.
Snopes has addressed numerous rumors about wild birds, including a true claim that a video shared in August 2024 showed a pair of flamingos feeding bright red liquid to a chick, and a false claim that a photo shared in January 2024 showed a red-and-white "pyjama bird."