fwiw the reason nobody can tell if a sand cat is real is the same reason biologists can barely find them. Felis margarita has thick fur growing over its paw pads, so it leaves almost no tracks on sand and it crouches flat with its eyes half shut when a torch hits it, which kills the eyeshine you'd use to spot any other cat at night. Field teams in the Sahara and the Arabian deserts sometimes go years between sightings. Bonus facts: they never need to drink, they get all their water from mice, lizards and the odd viper. Adults also keep that kitten face for life, so the 'baby' in the OP might just be a grown one. Real animal, weirdly bad at being filmed
My wife does project management for parks. All of the projects require some sort of environmental study but one in particular was in an area which was ideal habitat for a super rare rodent. When I say super rare I mean they have only been seen a handful of times. They had to do a 2 year study with various methods to make sure this rodent was not living in the small area they were building a parking lot for a hiking trail. There was no evidence after the 2 years. I understand the need for it but I couldn't handle working under strict conditions like that.
For some reason, this reminds me of the marmots that took up residence in a Wendy’s parking lot in the town I grew up in— it used to be a great meadow with foothill-type rocks, nobody cared about surveying for plants/animals back then. Once developed, the marmots moved in & ended up loving the parking lot, and the Wendy’s that set up shop there. It’s been the same marmot clan for at least 40 years, and everyone knows them as The Wendy’s marmots.
They're considered Least Concern and are found across wide ranges of 2 continents, nobody in the know thought they were extinct since their first scientific description.
I mean it's basically edited to shit to look like AI. Like why the fuck would someone put a finger on his mouth to the camera and then the weird transition. Or why is HIS face there at all? The photographer is not important, get the fuck out of the way you stupid narcissist. You're not the main character, but I have to look at your goofy face? It's like these posts about "oh I made a painting" and they pose next to the image with two thumbs up.
And then the actual clip of the cat looks time manipulated as well. Like it's in reverse. And the cats body is doing weird movements.
Anyway, I might be overreacting a bit but not much lol.
Also humans. Many cases of whalers and other sea-fairing individuals that have had to resort to drinking the blood of animals to survive. If you're out of your own piss to drink, and everything else is seawater, then any other liquid that doesn't outright kill you is an option.
Well, tbf most carnivorous mammals hardly need to drink. Most of their water is coming directly from animals they eat, but if water is available they'll drink it. The sand cat is pretty much the most extreme it gets when it comes to desert adaptation. They're small, nocturnal, and have extremely efficient kidneys. Their big ears even dissipate heat, like radiators.
There are still tribes of people in some desertic parts of Africa, who also never, or barely, drink any water, and only keep hydrated from milk, às well as blood from their goats that they punction in the neck to extract some, and then rapidly close the wound, keeping them alive.
This diet also being their main food source also, eating the meat of the animals only on very special occasions, and basically all (and the little) water that is found is exclusively for the cattle to drink.
It's supposed to increase immersion allowing the viewer to feel more like they are part of the video rather than just an outside observer, that if they were loud they might scare away the illusive creature
The selfie video is mirrored, but when you flip it, you can actually see the same rock on the screen. AI usually still has issues with these kinds of consistencies.
It's not whether Sand Cats are real and what they look like, it's that these images look potentially like AI. At the very least, they seem heavily filtered or edited.
Nah it's easier for these anti AI nutjobs to brigade everything now with " it looks fake and is AI " nonsense. It's become a cult now. Same mantra repeated as nauseum.
To me the problem is not really about being anti AI or not, it's more about stating "it's clearly fake" with 100% confidence and 0 clue. We have sources leading to the pro photographer, tagged and seen at events and everything. But those people are lazy or they keep a blind eye on it just because they want to stick to their beleifs.
Always love coming to the comment section to see everyone claiming AI when it's just something they've never seen before. I guess it's still better to be overly skeptical than overly gullible.
Genuinely I think it's cause the cat itself looks cartoonish, not the video. There's plenty of new things I've never seen I wouldn't immediately assume is AI. But THIS CAT...looks funky. And I guess God just said "this lil dude gonna look funky and that's ok". 🤷
If I have never seen the Tibetan fox before I'd wonder if it was not an AI creation too. It is real and I have seen pictures of it before it was possible to use AI or computers at all to do that. There are so many plants, natural phenomena, animals, and human behaviors that even 20 years ago seemed incredible but were verifiable and simply shocking and/or confusing.
If someone is skeptical about the veracity of a post they can just downvote and keep it moving (I do that myself). The constant barrage of "tHiS lOoKs LiKe Ai"
comments (but with no proof beyond a hunch) is more annoying at this point.
You think it's actually AI?? Then downvote or report, don't provide engagement by spamming useless comments. No one cares about your armchair assessment which could've been disproved with a google search
It just fits the script of a lot of AI slop. Person making some gesture to get your attention > slow pan to thing > jump cut to thing doing something.
I don't think anyone is doubting that this animal exists, just that the presentation feels weird. Usually it's just be a direct video or picture of the animal, none of this extra shit at the beginning.
I would say if you are concerned enough to make a comment while providing engagement on a possibly fake post made to trick people, thus spreading it to more people, how about making a search instead to find out for yourself rather than being confidently wrong. But people just love announcing what they think to be true without actual knowing anything about the topic. People being this way just feeds the machine.
In the actual photos you can see the poor kitten is covered in ticks/fleas. He explains why he doesn't interfere with wildlife and provides an update that the mom did return.
Thank Tiktok brains for that. You have to have a payoff for the viewer, which means you start the video off with something less interesting and then show them something interesting.
Gives them a dopamine hit and the video does much better on Instagram, Tiktok, Youtube Shorts.
Sucks but there is a reason for these annoying editing methods.
It almost looks like it's vertically compressed. It makes the proportions look really weird. It makes the face too wide and the tail look bizarrely narrow and un-fluffy. AI images also look really staged just like this one.
I'm not saying it's AI (and I don't think it is), but I fully understand why it appears that way. He's a recognized wildlife photographer too, so it seems pretty unlikely to be fake.
I also feel like the footage is extremely good, but the cuts and video itself is goofy and amateurish which makes it look like someone cut together some ai gen stuff.
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u/qualityvote2 13h ago edited 10h ago
u/BonolotaSen23, your post does fit the subreddit!