World News – UK – Did a former police dog bark at a dead body in a tree?

Since at least Oct.. . On Feb. 29, 2020, an online advertisement featured a somewhat strange picture of a fallen tree that said, « [Pictures] ex-cop dog barks at a tree, dad cuts it off. ». Other versions referred to the dog as « ex-police ». ”

Readers who clicked the ad were taken to a 40-page story of WorldLifestyle. com with the headline: “Ex-police dog keeps barking on the tree, Dad finds a lot more than wood inside. The story ended with a fake skeleton found in the tree.

The image in the advertisement, which appeared to show something resembling human limbs in a tree, showed nothing more than shipworms. Some Reddit users traced the photo back to a Chinese language website (warning: adult content).

Encyclopedia Brittanica published a page on shipworms, describing it as « one of approximately 65 species of sea clams in the Teredidae family (Teredinidae). They are said to be common in most of the oceans and seas, and are important because of the destruction they cause in wooden ship hulls, wharves and other submerged wooden structures. ”

The story “ex-cop dog barking on the tree” seemed to be made up. The story was full of photos from Shutterstock, as well as images we found on other sites like R / Geocaching on Reddit. We couldn’t find a true story about a retired police dog named Kyle barking on a tree. We also didn’t find any news of a Smith family who owned an ex-police dog named Kyle.

Google searches revealed that the subreddit r / SavedYouAClick had written about the misleading story at least twice when the headline read slightly different: “Ex-police dog keeps barking at tree, then investigators rush to it. ”

The purpose of the 40-page story was a strategy known as « arbitrage ». « The aim of » Arbitrage « was to make more money advertising on the 40 pages than it cost to run the misleading shipworm ad to attract readers. Business and technology blog Margins called arbitrage “the mythical free lunch that business says doesn’t exist. ”

Stories that focus on interesting facts or events about specific trees are nothing new in the land of rumors and jokes. In 2019 we looked at a claim about the « oldest tree on earth ». “In 2017, we also published a story with what appears to be a stump of an absolutely huge tree.

Note: On Dec.. . 17 our team blocked the misleading advertisement “Ex-cop dog barking in the tree” no longer appearing on Snopes. com. If readers discover variations of the advertisements displayed on this website, please contact us.

Bark, dog