Culture

We Regret To Inform You That The World Believes This Cursed Sculpture Is A Baby Platypus 

Over a million people liked someone's response defending the ugly-cute creature.

by Michelle Rennex  20 February 2020
baby platypus fake

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This week the internet was fooled by a photo of a kinda-cute, tiny, demonic creature laying in a human hand.

Before it was deleted, @blondewasabi questioned why the Australian mammal looked as weird as it did. “Why the fuck does a baby platypus look like that?,” @blondewasabi tweeted alongside a photo of what he thought was the animal.

The suspect looking “animal” had three nubs in place of fingers, a flat tail, some wrinkly skin, a half-bill-half-mouth situation going on, and some questionable redness around the eyes. For any Australian who has ever seen a platypus, it was instantly recognisable that whatever this was wasn’t real.

Despite the thing not being a real platypus, people around the globe continued to share the fake photo. “Just in case you needed to see a baby platypus today. I did but didn’t even know it,” one person tweeted to 3,000 likes. “You have been visited by baby platypus, rt for good luck,” tweeted another to 20,000 interactions.

Worst of all, one account that shared the photo of the “baby platypus” got over a million likes in just a few days. “I think he looks nice,” @beefedupstud responded to the original post that questioned why the hell the animal looked the way it did.

As it turns out, the “baby platypus” is actually just a sculpture made by Vladimir Matić-Kuriljov, a fantasy artist from Serbia. Sculpted and uploaded onto the internet in July last year, Vladimir called the “stone platypus baby“, the “cutest thing I ever made”. In the description of his work, Vladimir explains that the figure is sculpted out of Super Sculpey — a popular polymer clay with a ceramic-like feel, which explains the “convincing” look of the creature.

While speaking to IFLScience, Vladimir clarified that he clearly stated the platypus was not real. “The description of the piece on my ArtStation post clearly says so, it’s just the title that turned out to be misleading,” he said.

As the fake photo continued to circulate, some people took the opportunity to show what a real baby platypus looks like. Equally as cute, puggles — the actual name for a baby platypus — have a more even colour, less beady eyes and a prominent bill. I don’t know about you, but I think I prefer the less sinister-looking animal to the clay creation.

Junkee has reached out to Vladimir Matić-Kuriljov to find out what he used as the inspiration for his interpretation of a puggle.