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Claim: Video footage shared widely in 2021 showed a newly discovered "green" species of capybara. In 2021, social media users enthusiastically shared posts that appeared to suggest
a new "green" species of capybara had been discovered. On Feb. 15, wildlife photographer Bruno Brack posted a short video of a group of green-striped capybara walking over grass,
along with the following caption: > The recently discovered new species: the green Capybara, > Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris viridis. Brack's widely shared video was further promoted
in a post by Twitter user @LoochMcGooch. Some users will have quickly recognized that Brack's description was intended to be light-hearted, and showed the giant rodents covered in
algae, rather than natural green pigmentation, but others did not, especially in light of Brack's authentic-seeming, Latin species name. Brack himself quickly clarified that no new
species had been discovered, and explained the true contents of his video, writing: "A group of Capybaras just left a swamp with duckweed and algae." Based on information contained
in Brack's Twitter profile, he appears to have filmed the footage himself, and later specified it had been captured in Paraguay.