Fact-Check: How True is Viral Video of ‘Fulani Boy’ Eating ‘Human’ Flesh?

Fact-Check: How True is Viral Video of ‘Fulani Boy’ Eating ‘Human’ Flesh?

Claim: A disturbing video has gone viral, showing a young boy wearing a dirty Manchester United home jersey and holding a piece of meat resembling a human arm. The video is being circulated with the claim that the boy is a Fulani cannibal.

The one-minute, ten-second video includes a woman’s voiceover and picture. In her analysis, she implies that the boy is a Fulani herder living in the bush. 

She warns viewers to avoid such people by taking alternative routes. The woman likens the boy’s way of eating the meat, voraciously and effortlessly, to someone eating a carrot. She expresses concern that a boy capable of eating human flesh so casually might also be capable of harming others. She urges viewers to share the video widely.

The video is accompanied by dramatic text:

“Fulani boy eating human beings; we’re finished.

It’s not only our lands they want—they’re also eating us like bushmeat.

These Fulanis have added cannibalism to their terrorism. They should be smoked out of our forests immediately, or we are finished. The South should reconsider co-existing with these people before we are all exterminated.”

Social Media Impact

PRNigeria also found another video posted on Facebook, where the same claim was made in the Yoruba language. This version alleged that Fulani herders eat kidnapping victims whose families fail to pay ransom. That video attracted over 9.6k reactions, 1.5k comments, and 7.3k shares. While a few commenters believed the story, most condemned the poster for spreading misinformation without proper verification.

 Verification: :To verify the authenticity of the video, PRNigeria conducted a detailed analysis and found that the original audio was replaced with the woman’s voiceover, a tactic commonly used by content creators to attract attention and increase social media engagement. The altered audio made it difficult to identify the original language spoken in the background.

Further investigation, including reverse image searches and frame-by-frame analysis, revealed that the footage originated from a TikTok account (@Hadzabe_Lifestyle), which documents the daily lives of the Hadzabe people, an indigenous tribe in East Africa. According to this account, the meat being eaten is not human flesh, but rather baboon meat, and the boy is not Fulani, but Hadzabe.

The original TikTok video is one minute and sixteen seconds long, compared to the edited viral version, which is one minute and ten seconds. In the unaltered video, the background voices are intact and feature a language consistent with those spoken by the Hadzabe, unlike the viral version with the misleading voiceover.

Who Are the Hadzabe?

The Hadzabe (or Hadza) are a protected, indigenous hunter-gatherer group in Tanzania, primarily based in the Baray area of Karatu District in the Arusha Region. They live near Lake Eyasi and the Serengeti Plateau. As descendants of pre-Bantu populations, the Hadzabe have maintained a traditional lifestyle for thousands of years.

Hadzabe men are skilled hunters, often using handmade bows and arrows, and women and children forage for wild foods. Their diet includes meat, honey, fat, fruits, and roots, depending on the season.

Despite pressures from governments and missionaries to settle and adopt farming or Christianity, many Hadzabe still practice their ancestral way of life.

Human vs. Baboon Arms – Key Differences

While human and baboon arms may appear similar, there are distinct anatomical differences:

Thumbs: Humans have larger, fully opposable thumbs, enabling precise gripping. Baboons have smaller thumbs with limited opposition.

Fingers: Human fingers are shorter and straighter, while baboons have longer, curved fingers adapted for climbing.

Dexterity: Humans have superior dexterity due to their hand structure. Baboons are more adapted to grasping and movement in trees.

In the viral video, the fingers on the meat are notably long and curved, suggesting that it is a baboon’s arm, not a human’s.

Conclusion: Findings by PRNigeria reveals that the boy in the viral video is not Fulani, and he is not eating human flesh. He is from the Hadzabe tribe of Tanzania, and the meat in question was that of baboon, not human. The audio and context of the original video were manipulated to create a false narrative and incite ethnic fear and division.

Verdict: PRNigeria therefore concludes that the claim that a ‘Fulani boy’ is eating human flesh in the viral video is False and Misleading.

By PRNigeria