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Feb 20, 2009 07:01 PM | 36
Grainy images of a large snake in Borneo's Baleh River have some locals afraid the mythical Nabu snake is back. Is Borneo's 100-foot river snake—reported yesterday by London's Telegraph and captured in photographs (one appears to the left)—real?
Like the Loch Ness Monster, countless UFOs and Bigfoot, it's hard to say, says Hany Farid, a computer science professor at Dartmouth University, because it's been captured in such low resolution. "It's as if you took a blood sample," he says, "threw away 99 percent of it and asked me to do a forensic analysis."
An expert of digital photography forensics, Farid notes that with so few pixels to analyze, there's much less evidence to weigh in one way or the other. At a high resolution—say, 1,000 by 1,000 pixels—tampering gets tougher. At that level, he says, "It's really hard to do. You've got to get it all just right."
The low level of resolution is precisely why viewers should be skeptical. To make a fraudulent photo, he says, one would want to work in high resolution, fake it as cleanly as possible and then compress it and make it a bit blurry. "That's a good way of masking any artifacts that you've left behind," he says.
Plus, Farid notes that although the fuzziness of UFO and Nessie photos might add a bit of desirable mystique, in this day and age of high-quality point-and-shoot digital cameras, there really aren't many reasons why anyone's daytime photos should be as blurry as those of the Borneo "snake."
In addition to the resolution of the two snake photos, other characteristics of an easy fake pop up as well, he observes. Both images show the snake in a somewhat open area, not interacting with other objects. It would be a lot more difficult, Farid says, to fake a snake wrapped around a person.
Although Farid won't opine whether the Borneo photos are real or manipulated, he suggests a handy rule of thumb: "When you look at images, you should think about, 'How hard would this be to do?'"
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36 Comments
Add CommentIf it is an unedited photo, it looks to me like it could be a boat with a long trail of churned up biological material from the river in its wake.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLooks to me like it could be a boat with a long trail of churned up biological material from the river in its wake.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a Photoshop® enthusiast, I understand Prof. Farid's analysis well and agree with his points (mostly). I also am strongly against purposefully faking photos for political use or for misleading purposes. When I make a fake: I say it's a fake. Most often, I make them as a joke - to make a humorous point or even self-parody. So my intent is often the tip-off and even so, I've had to explain to some that they've "taken it wrong" and have been fooled.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo my only quibble with Prof. Farid is on two points:
1. To say there's no longer a way to take blurred photos with digital cameras is just plain wrong: I've "ruined" many a good photo by either over-extending beyond camera's ability or by "accident" when using manual focus OR when the auto-focus fails to react properly.
2. I also doubt the value of "telling all" - giving tips to those who make fake photos which enable them to (further) misuse the technology and further confuse the unwary public. I still concede: it's probably necessary to make the uninformed aware of the many things to look for in photos - before - reacting to the photo content.
But I haven't lost my sense of wonder and curiosity either: wouldn't it be earth-shaking to find a 100-foot snake (or Nessie, or Big Foot) actually exists?!
To me, it's pretty obviously faked. It has that miniaturization effect (I can't recall the name) going on.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExtraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and that is one extraordinary claim, and not very extraordinary evidence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConsidering how much a snake that big would have to eat on a daily basis, verifying its presence should be relatively easy.
Naturally, hundreds of idiots are loading their weapons to be the one to find it, as everybody knows, anytime there's anything bigger than mankinds ego on the loose, the only thing to do is hunt and kill it.
I ran the pix through a series of color, contrast, gamma and contrast tests to see if there were any telltale edges or slight mismatches in color. There were none. While blurring or low res-ing a pix may hide some teltale manipulations, color consistency of inserted segment are extremely difficult to match perfectly. Also there is the issue of perspective of the insert, which in this case is consistent. Having a spacial design and drawing background, even a slight perspective mismatch would be noticeable to me. IMHO, showing no sign of manipulation, the pix is authentic. But the thing we can not tell from the pix is scale. It seems that the foliage is trees, which we might assume are upwards of 100 ft tall, but we can not be sure. If so, the snake may be 5, or 600 feet long. If the foliage is low brush the snake may be 60 feet long. If the foliage is low weeds, it may be a small stream and the snake may be one foot long. However, it appears that the foliage is either brush or trees, which, to me suggests a very large snake. Also the resolution is consistent with a cell-phone camera and the angle consistent with an areal view from a plane at an altitude of about 1000 feet. It would have been better if there were several shots from different angles, but we can't rule out that the plane was 'on a mission' and didn't have the luxury of circling and re-shooting from other angles and altitudes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe articles author doesnt know much about photography. For one it looks like a pic from a cell phone, as they are frequently bad. Also, if the chopper or plan is moving at a high rate of speed the shots could be blurry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf it's a digital camera photo, we need the real photo to check the EXIF data. That will tell you if it's an original or not. The only thing suspiscious is that there is only ONE photograph. If I saw the snake I would take as many as I could as I was flying by.
I may not be an expert like vvurdsmyth, but I too tried to find inconsistencies in the color, contrast, and perspective and couldn't find any. I agree with his and others opinions that the photograph probably hasn't been manipulated, but that says nothing about the actual content itself. It could easily be a small model or otherwise contrived scene...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisColor sampling the wake and then color sampling the nearby calm river water shows: wake is "bluish" while the river is distinctly "greenish." Of course, we'd have to have a number of shots showing both wakes and river water from that same stretch of river to make a proper comparison.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for the "forest" it reminds me of cgi effects used in video games - not realistic. For that matter, if the snake were on land, it would be creating a visible swath (or swaths) in the vegetation. This would leave lingering evidence of its passing - there is no such evidence.
All in all, I think we should depend more on human behavior standards than photo analysis:
1. Others point out: if it were at all possible, there'd be 20 photos from the same series submitted for every news agency on Earth to purchase. In these cases - it's a telltale sign that someone didn't have the time to produce such a faked series of photos. Pocket size digital cameras are ubiquitous, why do we only see crappy cell phone pics? I carry a digital camera wherever I go - daily.
2. We already know: all photos of "super normal" creatures appear only in badly degraded form. There are NO examples which show clear close-ups in high resolution, let alone any series of two or more such photos. When digital cameras can take at least one photo per second: it IS ridiculous to expect what might have been the limits with commonly available film cameras.
3. Before and after: in this case, we've never heard reports of such an outrageously over-sized snake from that or any other area. Betting: we'll see no examples from actual expeditions to capture photos of this specimen, either.
4. As someone already mentioned: a snake of this size would decimate appropriate size food species in it's huge hunting territory. This would be "noticed" to say the least. The snake would have been sighted numerous times, it would be fearless and would encroach more inhabited areas in recent years. Likewise: if real, it would continue to "cause a stir" in that region in the near future. Snakes of the large species don't reach maximum lengths for years. Where was it when it was "only" 30-40-50 feet long?
5. It's reasonable to class this snake as one of the constrictors: such snakes leave "casts" from their digested meals. Where is "the snake poop" from this monster?
The wake that the snake makes are too far out from it's body to be real. This shows that the snake is only a few inches long unless it was swimming at lease 35 mph or more.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe wake of the snake is too far out from it's body to be that large. To create a wake of that size it would have to be swimming at around 35 mph or more. If the snake is from a real picture it is only a few inches long.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI could make this same photo with my pet garter snake, a bathtub, some food dye and a good aerial photo of a river. I am not going to print the instructions, but if you know photoshop at all it would be about a 45 minute job and you would not have any artifacts. I would also like to point out to the likes of vvurdsmyth that lack of evidence of forgery does not mean it is real, not with the lack of detail in the photo. Lets not forget you can easily forge the EXIF data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSci Am and the London Telegraph published a cropped version. A full version of the picture showing much more of the surrounding countryside, allowing a better estimate of size, is at http://img369.imageshack.us/img369/1858/ularbesar01uz8.jpg.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen there's the part where the animal is biologically unlikely. At 30 metres, this is twice as long as Titanoboa, which because of its size, was calculated to require an average ambient temperature of 30�. Borneo lowlands are variously reported to have average temperatures of 26 to 28�.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would expect that other measures, like the wake and swimming posture could be evaluated by an expert.
Sufficient to say that people really do enjoy imagining and talking about elusive creatures. Is there any part of the world that people did not once populate with large, seldom seen animals?
Its quite amazing how much in the world there still is that we did not discover. In Borneo, or even in Canada, or the US, or wherever you live, it is very very possible for animals to be discovered. Giant squids were thought of as stuff of legends until it turned out they were real. It is very possible for this kind of animal to go unnoticed in the unexplored jungles.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven still I would not dive in and go for a swim
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI know nothing about digital or photography, let alone the two combined, but something I noticed is that there's only waves from the front of the snake. would the entire body have to move to propel it along and wouldn't every part of a body that size cause at least some visible ripple?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI know nothing about digital or photography, let alone the two combined, but there is something about this photo that seems off. There are two ripples at the front of the snake, but none at the back. Wouldn't the snake use it's entire body to move through the water and so shouldn't we be seeing ripples at the back as well as the front? Also, wouldn't there be some sort of water disturbance along side the snake too? I want this to be real as much as most, cause wouldn't that be bomber, but it seems to much to hope for
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, the NUMBERS are wrong and the picture is a fake as well. You can speculate about what manner of digital wizardry was used all you want but everyone is missing a very important element that tends to immediately dismiss this picture as an absolute fabrication. Look at the trees and the greenery in the photo. If this is dense tropical rainforest, and I suspect it is because Borneo is covered in dense rainforest, you have to assume the trees bordering the river are generally over 100 feet tall. That would put the spread at the top of each tree at canopy height at 50 feet or more. You can extrapolate the river's width by comparing it to the top of one (or several combined) of the trees along the banks of the river. Given that, the river in the picture is at least 200, perhaps 300 feet wide or wider. The "snake" is at least twice as long as the river is wide making it over 600 feet long, not a mere 100 feet as the "news" release suggests. All things being relative, the "snake" in the picture COULD BE well over 1000 feet in length! And there is absolutely NO WAY a 1000 foot long snake exists anywhere on this planet. NO WAY, NO HOW. So calm down, it's a hoax and nothing more.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother giant snake report but this time from southwestern Virginia!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y32/GrowLLLTigeRRR/LakeSnake.jpg
<a href="http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y32/GrowLLLTigeRRR/?action=view¤t=LakeSnake.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y32/GrowLLLTigeRRR/LakeSnake.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>
[IMG]http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y32/GrowLLLTigeRRR/LakeSnake.jpg[/IMG]
i'm indonesian but not from borneo, and i hope it's not real. if it is real then i think we have to kill it or do something about it, coz we are poor people, we don't need that kind of stuff in our backyard, a giant snake can slow down our economics, that snake can go somewhere else in the world. In here we need more palm oil, not giant snake...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDear Amanda,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBelieve me, it would be better to live in a beautiful unspoiled area that to have all the gadgets money can buy. Please know that your beautiful home is much more valuable as it is than as another vast storehouse of raw goods for others to plunder.
I would like to point out that there is a YouTube video from 2007 with this photo. Found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oeE23DjrFc
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo um... yeah. Not new.
It is obviously faked. There appears to be a wake from the movement. However that wake is not reflected from the river's shore.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSnakes don't have to eat on a daily basis. It probably isn't real, but not by that reasoning. Most reptiles don't have to eat every day.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOK , Here's my take on it . It could be genuine or not but , there ARE other sightings of creatures of a similar size some of which live in lakes and , it's NOT impossible for these creatures to hibernate for long periods and only awaken for a relatively short period . Another thought here is this ... most of those which are NOT lake bound could live in the Ocean and only spend a short time in a river possibly NOT eating at all in fresh water .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere was a sighting in the Atlantic Ocean a number of years ago of a SNAKE LIKE creature over sixty feet long swimming on the surface with ten feet of it's head out of the water and it was moving faster than the merchant vessel . Other sightings include one in TWO scandinavian lakes and , of course , Nessie . If you go back to the anicent Aztec , one of their Deities , KUKULKAN is described as being a feathered SERPENT .
Further , the Chinese had the founder of a dynasty claiming to be a descendant of a RIVER DRAGON ( SERPENT or SNAKE ) !
I say that along with the KRAKKEN , a 200 foot from tentacle tip to tentacle tip OCTIPUS type , the giant water snakes are real . However , who in their right minds really wants to try and capture one ... not me ... I want to go on living !!! ------------------ JT
Here is one for the records. I am a photo enthusiast, worked in a studio for many years and do it as a hobby. I also like to keep up with the times and things around me, but I still prefer the old film media. The advantage to digital process being that the camera tags the photo, and any changes thereafter are noted. Why wouldn't the Professor know this? As far as the concept of clarity, we are dealing with a cryptozoologic event. Unfortunately it is almost like a UFO. If you get a blurry picture, not real, the blur was added to distract from wires or whatever. But if the picture is sharp, guess what, not real also because it is a studio setup, or has been manipulated some other way, so regardless , no photo will ever be good enough, for crying out loud, moving film of bigfoot is still being debated from the last millenium.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI note most commentary here has been on the image. Any herpetologists out there? This is not the body form of a giant snake. I'm betting it's an ordinary colubrid of some sort -- much enlarged. Maybe Natrix.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI note most commentary here has been on the image. Any herpetologists out there? This is not the body form of a giant snake. I'm betting it's an ordinary colubrid of some sort -- much enlarged. Maybe Natrix.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1) ok "um ive just taken a picture of a gigantic snake!" you would've thought the pilot would've turned around and they would've taken a LOT of photos.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this2) There was an article on fossils of a prehistoric snake being found and that prehistoric snake didnt even come close to the size of this snake in the photo. So if a prehistoric snake is not as big and no one has ever bumped into this snake while cutting/burning down the rain forest...then its probably a fake.
3) To those of you who gave technical analysis to push your thoughts on why the photo might be real. Thats narrow minded pin head thinking. You do a 15minute analysis on a digital photo and you have no other facts in your head about other historical facts. Im technical too, and I analyse too, but fortunately my arguments arent so narrow minded.
If this is a fake, it's a damned good one! Nearly everyone here is commenting from the point of view of technicians, (i.e., people who are extremely familiar with visually manipulatory software).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI, however, can comment from the point of view of an artist, (i.e., someone extremely familiar with using their eyes, (not only from the point of view of fine art painting or, indeed, visually manipulatory software, but also of that from of someone given to actually paying extreme visual attention to the world around him).
I can also speak from the point of view of someone who studied river based Earth Science at university level.
And what particularly strikes me about this image, (when viewed in 'inverted' colours), especially if it turns out it IS a fake, are the extremely realistic secondary effects the snake's successive wakes apear to be having much further down stream, the even less obviously visible (and for that reason even more realistic) differing effects they're having on the opposing convex or concave river banks, (i.e., the 'responding' wash from the convex bank is appropriately more intense); and finally the even more subtle, (and to me, therefore, even more compelling), detail of the water being disturbed around the head.
It also strikes me that if this image is real then the creature is powering through the water at high speed, i.e., its behaviour isn't that of a predator on the prowl but more alike that of a salmon returning to its spawning ground.
In short, if this is a fake, the person concerned either really knows their zoological and earth sciences, (and spends as much of their time observing the real world as they do messing about with Photoshop), or they got extremely lucky.
JT, it's interesting you mentioning the 'feathered serpent' in relation to a creature being declared an obvious fake by so many.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's amazing how many people've dismissed the possibility the 'feathered serpent' might've really existed, denouncing it as an obvious example of 'mythological thinking', since serpents've 'never been feathered', ignoring the two facts that, 1) the consensus for at least two decades now has been birds are descendants of the 'dinosaurs', (using that term very broadly); 2) even many of the 'dinosaurs' are now thought to've had feathers.
All of which makes it slightly remarkable that an 'obvious fairy tale' based on 'ignorance of the facts', should prove to fit so well with the current paradigm.
"Extraordinary"-fine-worded comment. I intend to use that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis snake is FAKE! This river is said to be the filthiest river next to the Ganges river so it would be almost impossible to see the snake in the waters. This picture could have easily been edited for something as easy as publicity or money.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyou make a great example of this snake being a fairy tale...do you think that there is a possibitlity that maybe this snake is real? Sure, they're just myths and all, but anything is possible and anything is bound to happen one way or another. Either that is a real snake, or it's a really good faked out picture. If it's real, why wouldn't other people have said something about it...I mean really, who could miss a 100 foot long snake?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere's something really odd about this, it all happened so fast, and so late. There is no way on Earth that everyone in the world is finding out about this snake now and like I said before, how in the world could you overlook a one HUNDRED foot long snake...the longest snake that I've ever seen a picture of is a 49 foot python found in India. So how is there that big of a gap between these two snakes....there has to be other kinds like it, too, or else it couldn't exsist...think about it!!!
Someone pointed out, it's a photo of the Congo. And the original photo doesn't have a snake.
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