In August 2025, posts about a supposed “spotless giraffe” living in a Tennessee zoo spread online.

“Meet Kipekee — the only spotless giraffe alive today. In rural Tennessee, Brights Zoo welcomed a giraffe unlike any seen in half a century,” said one Aug. 14 Facebook post, a claim echoed by similar posts. This was not the first time social media spread claims about Kipekee; posts about the allegedly solid-colored giraffe have circulated on Facebook, Instagram and Reddit since 2023.

An extremely rare spotless giraffe born yesterday at a Tennessee zoo
byu/TheSentinelsSorrow ininterestingasfuck

Kipekee is a real spotless giraffe who, as of this writing, lives at Brights Zoo in Tennessee — with “no plans” of moving anywhere else, according to an email from David Bright, the zoo’s director. At the time of Kipekee’s July 31, 2023, birth, news outlets reported that Brights Zoo may have welcomed the only giraffe without spots alive in the world, as evidenced by Kipekee’s name, which means “unique” in Swahili. However, just a month later, another spotless giraffe was … spotted … in Namibia.

Given that the August posts accurately described Kipekee’s existence and living situation but relied on outdated information about the rarity of the giraffe’s coat, we rate this claim a mixture of truth and falsehood.

Numerous legitimate news outlets, including NPR and National Geographic, covered Kipekee’s birth. Broadcast journalists have filmed Kipekee at the private, family-owned zoo. Furthermore, zoo visitors have posted various images and videos of the giraffe online at different angles, and the dates of these posts range from 2023 to 2025. As such, we are confident that the giraffe exists.

@lushandbashful Shes soo cute ? #fyp #spotlessgiraffe #tennessee #kipekee #animalsoftiktok ? so this is love – soft girl aesthetic

Kipekee was reportedly the first known spotless giraffe born since 1972, when one such giraffe was born at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo, according to archival photos.

But in September 2023, the Giraffe Conservation Foundation announced that another patternless giraffe was photographed at Mount Etjo Safari Lodge in central Namibia — the first recorded in the wild. The Giraffe Conservation Foundation, which partners with organizations like the Smithsonian Institution, says it is the only nongovernmental organization in the world dedicated solely to the conservation of wild giraffes.

The foundation’s news release included images of the spotless Namibia giraffe. At the time, experts said they did not know why the giraffes had no spots.

“The lack of spots could be caused by genetic mutations or recessive genotype in one or more genes related to the pattern, but without detailed genetic analysis, these are mere speculations,” Julian Fennessy, the organization’s co-founder and director of conservation, said in the statement.

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An alleged quote attributed to late night TV host Stephen Colbert circulated on social media in late July and early August 2025, purporting that the comedian made a cutting remark about the state of Christianity in the United States.

The quote has been shared on social media for years, as evidenced by a post on X from 2022.

In the wake of CBS announcing the end of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” however, users on social media started sharing the alleged quote once more on platforms like BlueSky, Threads and Facebook.

The alleged quote in question states:

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition … and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.

Some users agreed with Colbert’s alleged sentiment and shared the statement alongside an image of Colbert sitting at a desk, adding, “It’s time to reiterate what the teachings of Jesus or prophets/revered enlightened leaders of any religion were actually saying to help humankind evolve. It’s about love and inclusion. Not hate, violence, or power.”

The quote above was correctly attributed to Colbert.

The comedian said it during a Christmas-themed episode of “The Colbert Report” that aired on Comedy Central on Dec. 16, 2010, with featured guests comedian Amy Sedaris and musician Paul Simon. The segment in which the quote appeared was titled, “Jesus was a Liberal Democrat.”

It’s worth noting that “The Colbert Report,” which ran on Comedy Central from 2005 to 2014, featured Colbert playing a satirical characterization of himself as a conservative commentator.

However, we must also note that episodes of “The Colbert Report” are no longer available on any streaming services, and clips posted to YouTube are primarily limited to 2014, the show’s final year before Colbert moved on to host “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on CBS.

Nevertheless, there is substantial reporting about the quote from the time it aired, as well as an audio clip of the moment on YouTube that was published on Sept. 21, 2011. As such, we are confident in attributing the quote in question to Colbert despite a lack of visual evidence online.

Business Insider reported on the segment at the time, citing it as the latest in an ongoing war of words between Colbert and (real) conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly over Jesus’ teachings. The article cited a summary of an upcoming episode of O’Reilly’s show that read, “Colbert … Jesus … and the poor. The late night comic is now a theologian — and attacks Bill in the process! But does he have his Biblical facts straight?”

A writer for State of Formation, an “online forum for emerging religious and ethical leaders,” discussed the segment on Dec. 20, 2010:

It makes an argument that as both a religious and a political liberal I am all too happy to hear. It is Stephen Colbert — a person universally known and, among my generation in particular, almost universally esteemed and, yes, respected — calling out those who profess to be Christians yet espouse policies that further neglect or oppress those in the lowest income brackets. Beneath (and also because of) its satirical aim, this is a powerful argumentative blow to some on the religious and/or political Right.

Further, a writer for the alternative newspaper Portland Mercury discussed the segment the day after it aired and stated:

What really got me was a piece that brilliantly satirizes an issue near and dear to my heart: the inherent hypocrisy of Christianity in the West. Since this is Blogtown and not Obvious Theology 101 I know I don’t have to spell this s*** out; we all know that the basic tenants of Christ’s teachings (give away all your money, judge not lest ye be judged, divorced people are committing adultery, etc.) are ignored by pretty much everyone, especially those who claim to be Christians.

Finally, TV Tropes also listed the quote as Colbert’s, though it denotes it as attributable to “the character” rather than “the person.”

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In July 2025, Scott Whitehead, a man who described himself as an “animal expert” in his social media bios, posted a video of a pair of mountain lions, also called cougars or pumas, walking in the snow. According to Whitehead, the mountain lions were “mysteriously migrating south from Yellowstone to Utah.”

Internet users viewed the video Whitehead posted to Facebook more than 6.5 million times, while his video on Instagram racked up more than 156,000 likes by the time of this writing.

Many people took Whitehead’s claim seriously. Searches about mountain lions leaving Yellowstone National Park started trending on Google, and an X account with more than 1 million followers reposted it.

However, this was not a video of Yellowstone mountain lions migrating south to Utah. There was no evidence that the park’s small mountain lion population was “mysteriously” leaving the area, either. As a result, we’ve rated the video miscaptioned.

The video first appeared online on May 22, 2025, when a Chilean photographer shared it to Instagram. In the caption, the photographer wrote in Spanish that the video was recorded in Torres del Paine, a national park full of glaciers and mountains in southern Chile. That same account posted other photos and videos of mountain lions from the same region in May and June 2025.

There are mountain lions in Yellowstone, however; the National Park Service estimated on an informational webpage that only 29 to 45 cougars stay in Yellowstone National Park year-round, while some others enter it seasonally — in contrast to the “hundreds” Whitehead claimed were migrating in the video. The mountain lions in the park are “seldom seen,” according to the NPS.

Mountain lions anywhere do migrate and move around. About 99% of young male mountain lions disperse 50 to 400 miles from the place of their birth at about a year and a half old, according to the NPS webpage. Even within Yellowstone, cougars follow their main prey from the higher elevations in the summer to the lower elevations in the winter.

A Google search for “mountain lions leaving Yellowstone” found no mainstream news sources reporting on the apparent migration, even though such publications would surely report on such unusual behavior. Most of the search results were social media posts, fact-checks and sites that cited Whitehead as their source.

We found that the video Whitehead was speaking over was miscaptioned.

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