“If you think ‘Navy Seals’ sound fearsome, how about the ‘Soviet Battle Moose’? They’ve certainly been getting the media in Finland fired up – although a little basic journalistic fact-checking might have saved them from all the worry.”

Russia Today

March 31 2019 — The Finnish broadcaster Yle has famously reported that the Soviet Union ran a clandestine program to train moose as cavalry mounts in the 1930s. According to Yle, the Red Army had some 1,500 infiltration riders ready for the 1939 war with Finland. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY

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The story included amazing details!

“Stalin had postponed the start of the Finnish war to let the moose heat season pass, or that the animals could tell the Finnish language from Russian almost a kilometer away, and alert their riders to the presence of the enemy.”

Most of the moose survived. Eventually, they scattered around the surrounding forests.

However, they never forgot their military training. In the first post-war years, Finnish hunters suffered much during their encounters with these unusual animals during the hunting season.

The moose, paying no attention to the roar of shots, ran directly towards the hunters and furiously attacked them, as they heard the Finnish speech.”

The Finnish journalists had based their story on an article published in the Russian version of Popular Mechanics.

The Popular Mechanics story was a rather funny ‘April fool’ prank printed in the April 2010 edition.

The piece gave away plenty of clues that it was a hoax and the last sentence of the article made it abundantly clear.

Примечание редакции: данная статья опубликована в апрельском номере журнала и является первоапрельским розыгрышем.

Editor’s note: this article was published in the April issue of the magazine and is an April Fool’s Day.

The Finnish journalists did not discover their blunder until weeks later. Be on your guard!

Fake or True?

Can you tell if these famous pictures are genuine?

US President Theodore Roosevelt riding a bull moose

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Philippine Governor General William Howard Taft seated on a water buffalo

Wrong, deer: Finnish media fall for ‘Soviet battle moose’ hoax

REFERENCES

Finnish media fall for ‘Soviet battle moose’ hoax, probed by regulator — RT

Malaysia seeks 10 year-jail terms for ‘fake news’ — BBC

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Fake News — Smart People are Not Immune

Animal Spies & Warriors — Red Army Trained 1500 Moose to Invade Finland