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Chinese tiger photo was faked

Chinese authorities have finally admitted that a photo of a super-rare South China Tiger was faked.

Doubts have been aired before about the veracity of the photo, which was unveiled to great fanfare last year.

Now the photographer, farmer Zhou Zhenglong, has been arrested for fraud and his reward of 20,000 Yuan (about $3,000) has been revoked.

According to China Daily Zhou allegedly used a photo of the tiger borrowed from another farmer to create his fakes. To add credence to his clams he also allegedly used a wooden model of a paw to create tiger footprints.

Reuters points out that this is the latest scandal of official endorsements of wildlife photos. “In February, the chief editor of a Chinese newspaper quit after one its photographers faked a prize-winning photo of endangered Tibetan antelopes appearing unfazed by a passing train on the Qinghai-Tibet railway,” it notes. See this Nature Correspondence from the zoologists investigating the impact of the railway on wildlife for more on this.

With the news about the Amazon ‘lost tribe’ photos that were actually no such thing still fresh, it seems you just can’t trust photographers any more.

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