Fact Check: Is the Felis Salamandra cat real? Viral photo debunked

The pictures of Felis Salamandra, a shiny black cat with rare yellow spots and yellow eyes are doing the rounds on the internet, and people are now wondering if the cat is real.

Twitter user @UnionRebelMs shared Salamandra's pictures and captioned the post:

"Incredibly beautiful Félis Salamandra (Wild Cat)."

So far, the post has garnered 3,603 views, 185 likes, and 48 retweets at the time of writing this article.

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Felis Salamandra is not a real cat

The photos of shiny black cats that are doing the rounds on the internet are fake and there is no such thing as a Felis Salamandra cat.

While several social media users believed that the pictures were real, some internet users were quick enough to identify that the pictures of the rare cat were AI-generated. HITC also confirmed the same and published an article about it.

Notably, the pictures of the cat were also circulating on Facebook where a caption read:

"Discovery of Felis Salamandra, a rare subspecies of wild cat. Scientists recently announced the discovery of a new subspecies of a wild cat called Félis Salamandra. This subspecies is very rare as it is considered a subspecies of Asia’s little leopard and is endemic to a tropical mountainous region. Lost in a valley hard to access, which explains the late discovery."

Facebook post (Image via snip from Facebook/@Sachee N Rodriguez)

But to the disappointment of social media users, who were hoping that the cat was real, the pictures were AI-generated.

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Earlier, a similar picture of a cat went viral online and it had snake-like skin

This is not the first time that AI-generated pictures of wild animals have been circulated online with the claim that they are real. Earlier this year, pictures of a cat with snake-like skin, called a Serpens Catus, went viral on the internet.

The post claimed that Serpens Catus is the rarest species of feline on Earth. It further stated:

"These Animals live in hard-to-reach regions of the Amazon rainforest, and therefore are relatively poorly studied."

However, the picture of this cat also turned out to be made by using artificial intelligence.

Moreover, recently, pictures of Lynx Owl also made rounds on the internet and, it could be seen that it was a cross between a wild cat and a common bird. Those also turned out to be AI-generated.