Lions did not escape from Mississippi's Jackson Zoo; photo is from 2015 in Africa | Fact check

Joedy McCreary, USA TODAY
·3 min read

The claim: Lions escaped from a zoo in Jackson, Mississippi

A Dec. 19 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows a male and female lion walking outside at night.

“Escaped from Jackson Zoo a few days ago spotted on Hwy 43 outside of Canton Citjy limit heading North (sic),” reads the post's caption.

The post was shared more than 2,000 times in two days. A similar version accumulated hundreds of additional shares in the same period.

More from the USA TODAY Fact Check Team:

Our rating: False

The Jackson Zoo does not have lions. The photo in the post was taken in South Africa in 2015.

No lions at zoos in Jackson, Nashville

More than 200 animals across 70 species, ranging from monkeys and tigers to an Asiatic Black Bear, call the Jackson Zoo in Jackson, Mississippi, home.

But no lions could have escaped it, as the post claims, because none of them live there in the first place.

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The lion is not listed among the animals that live at the facility, according to the zoo’s website. The Clarion Ledger of Jackson also reported the zoo is not home to any lions.

The image in the post of a male lion walking near a female one was taken in 2015 in Africa and appears on the website of a conservation group that monitors and tracks wildlife, including leopards and lions. It caught the lions walking near the South African town of Hluhluwe.

The photo also appeared in subsequent social media posts that claim lions escaped from zoos in Indianapolis, Indiana, and Nashville, Tennessee. A post about the purported escape published by a satirical Indiana-based account was shared more than 25,000 times in a day.

But none of those are true, either. Nashville’s zoo does not have any lions, spokesperson Mallory Immel told The Tennessean. The Indianapolis Zoo has a female lion but not a male lion, spokesperson Emily Garrett told IndyStar on Dec. 21.

The Indianapolis Zoo also debunked the claim on social media, saying in a Dec. 21 Facebook post that the images came from Africa, not Indiana, and stating that “all of our animals are safe and sound.”

The social media user who shared the post told USA TODAY it was meant as a joke, though the post contains no indications of that.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: False claim that lions escaped Indianapolis, Nashville | Fact check