Fact Check: Have pink elephants been found in India

New Delhi, May 21: Have you ever seen a pink elephant and do they even exist. A Facebook post has gone viral with photo of a pink coloured elephant.

The post was captioned, pink elephants can be found in some regions of India. Because of the red soil, elephants take on a permanent pink colour because they spray dust over their bodies to protect themselves from insects.

This claim is false. A reverse image search led to a website that featured the photo of the elephant. In the original image, the elephant is not pink. The photo was taken in 2005 and was attributed to Carlos ET Barreirors. You can check the original image here.

A blogger had shared the image of the pink elephant and written, " this Pink Elephant photo edition done by zorro13 may not be the most elaborate piece of design, but it did make me think about the pink elephant. Anyone know that game? You're absolutely not allowed to think about the pink elephant and the more you try the more difficult it gets. It grows on you if it's get repeated enough."You can read the post here

These posts make it clear that the image has been photoshopped. Further we also found out whether pink elephants really exist. Elephants have a tendency to cover themselves in mud. However this does not change their colour to pink. There is nothing to show or suggest that pink elephants existed or even existed in the past.

Hence we concluded that there are no pink elephants and the image being shared is photo shopped.