In March, a photo of serpens cattus, a snake cat, went viral on social media. It has been argued that she is the rarest feline on the planet, which lives in areas of the Amazon River so inaccessible that it was not possible to photograph the animal for the first time until 2023.
The posts also said that the snake cat weighs only four kilograms and is almost impossible to housebreak. However, it soon became clear that cattus snakes are most notable for their diet: they feed on gullible users who are unable to tell fake from real news.
The snake cat turned out to be fiction: the picture with its image was created by a neural network, and a prankster came up with a description. As zoologists were quick to explain, a snapshot of a mangrove snake, which has an eye-catching black and yellow color, was used for illustration.