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Fact Check
A viral video claims to show a girl in rural Bangladesh walking through a paddy field with a civet in her arms and a porcupine following her like a pet.
The video is not from Bangladesh. It was filmed in Sri Lanka’s Polonnaruwa District.
A video circulating widely across Facebook, TikTok, X, YouTube and Instagram purportedly shows a young girl walking through a lush green paddy field while carrying a small civet. A porcupine is also seen following her like a pet, leading to viral captions describing the scene as a real-life “Disney Princess” moment from rural Bangladesh.
Several international media pages, including prominent Indian newspaper The Telegraph, and multiple social media users have also shared the clip with English, Bengali, Hindi, Malayalam, and Tamil captions hailing “the rare friendship.”
The posts can be seen here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
In one version of the viral video, the child can be heard speaking in Sinhala to the person recording the clip, asking: “Dura wadidha?” (දුර වැඩීද?), which translates to “Is it too far?”
A reverse image search using keyframes from the video traced the earliest upload to June 11, 2026, posted by a Sri Lankan Facebook user named Prabath Silva.
The original Sinhala caption of the video reads, “අක්කා එක්ක කුබුරු යන ඉත්තෑ මල්ලි“, which translates to “Little porcupine brother going to the paddy field with his elder sister.”
Further videos uploaded from the same account show the same child interacting with the porcupine, playing with it, feeding it carrots, giving it milk from a feeding bottle, and referring to it as “TUTU.” The conversations in these clips are consistently in Sinhala, not Bangla or any other language.
We have reached out to Silva and will update this article once we receive a response.
The Facebook profile of the uploader lists the location as Polonnaruwa District, North Central Province, Sri Lanka.
Although the viral video itself does not mention a location, further verification was carried out by analysing other videos uploaded by the same Facebook account.
Several of these posts included references to “Sinhapura” in their captions. Based on this, the location was cross-checked through administrative records and geographic mapping. “Sinhapura” is officially identified as Grama Niladhari Division No. 286, under the Welikanda Divisional Secretariat in the Polonnaruwa District, Sri Lanka.
This area lies along the eastern edge of the Mahaweli River basin within Sri Lanka’s dry-zone agricultural belt. It is characterised by flat paddy cultivation landscapes, small-scale farming settlements, patches of dry-zone scrub forest, and irrigation canals linked to Mahaweli development schemes.
The Polonnaruwa and Welikanda regions are known for rich dry-zone biodiversity, including porcupines, elephants, monkeys, water buffaloes, and wetland birds, and are located near protected areas such as Wasgamuwa and Somawathiya National Parks.
Several prominent news channels also published reports confirming that the viral video is from Sri Lanka. The reports can be seen here, here, and here.
The viral video does not show a “Disney Princess-like” moment in Bangladesh, featuring a girl walking through a paddy field with a civet in her arms and a porcupine following her like a pet. It was originally recorded and uploaded in Sri Lanka’s Polonnaruwa District by a local Facebook user.
FAQs
Q1. Was the viral video filmed in Bangladesh?
No. It was filmed in Sri Lanka’s Polonnaruwa District.
Q2. How was the origin of the video identified?
Through reverse image search, which traced it back to a Facebook account posting multiple original clips from Sri Lanka.
Q3. Why did people think it was from Bangladesh?
Because of the rural paddy field scenery, which can resemble parts of Bangladesh, and the viral framing of the clip on social media.
Our sources
Original video posted by Sri Lankan Facebook user Prabath Silva on June 11, 2026.
Similar videos posted by Sri Lankan Facebook user Prabath Silva: Video 1, Video 2, and Video 3.
News article published by Newswire on June 29, 2026.
News article published by Daily Mirror on June 29, 2026.
News video published by Newsfirst Sinhala on June 30, 2026.
False
