Is this the real image of Duck Orchids?

Hyderabad: Several social media users have posted a beautiful image of two orchids resembling ducks. They are calling it 'duck orchid'.

The close resemblance of the orchids to ducks has been a topic of curiosity among the masses for years now. The image can be seen on various social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and more.

The caption of the post reads, 'Quack quack! Duck orchid'

Does the image really show a duck orchid? Let's find out.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found the came to be false as the image is digitally edited.

On closely observing the image, we found that there were several features that seems to be fake for a flower like the positioning of eyes, wings, and the beak.

On performing a simple keyword search with the keyword duck orchid and found similar images of the same flower uploaded by a Twitter user. In these pictures, we could clearly see that there are no eyes and no yellow color beak to be found.

Twitter user captioned the image by saying, “This is the real deal...Duck Orchid (Caleana major) from Australia and New Zealand.”

Taking a cue from this, we further searched for Caleana major in-depth and found that the flower is originally named as 'Large duck orchid', which is native to the Australian wilderness. The red purple and green flower that blooms appear in late spring and early summer.

This flower attracts male sawflies, trick and trap them in its beak-like opening, forcing the unsuspecting softly to pass through the pollen as it exits from the trap.

Moreover, the reason why we perceive this orchid as a duck orchid is due to the psychological phenomenon of Pareidolia. Pareidolia is the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern. So, in this case, when we see this flower, we perceive it as a duck because of its shape that resembles a duck.

Lastly, a simple reverse image search led us to an identical image uploaded on Shutterstock in its vector image section, which is the categorization of images that are a form of computer graphics.

We also found a few similar images on Twitter of orchids labeled as duck orchids and crane orchids as well. In the comment section, there is a link attached by ‘Hoaxeye’ which confirms the images to be AI-generated and not real.