Is this video true about the kangaroo that was not allowed on the plane?

At the end of May 2025, a video of a woman trying to board an Australian airport accompanied by a kangaroo went viral on the Internet. We decided to check if anything like this actually happened.

In the 10-second clip, a passenger argues with an airline employee at the boarding gate. Standing next to them is a small kangaroo holding a boarding pass in its paws and, as the caption states, is being prevented from boarding. However, it is difficult to make out what exactly the women are saying. Social media users who posted the video (Facebook, X, Telegram, "VKontakte") an airline employee was condemned for discriminating against a sad-eyed passenger who modestly clutches his ticket.

Despite the fact that for a Russian-speaking Internet user kangaroos are exotic, in Australia they can actually be seen even at airports. True, not exactly as shown in the video. For example, in 2013, several marsupials invaded to different Australian airports: one broke into the terminal and resisted attempts to catch it, the other was found in the parking lot (the animal was wounded, so volunteers were easily able to take it to a safe place and provide assistance to it). However, a kangaroo passenger is an unusual phenomenon even in Australia, so it is not surprising that a video of the animal modestly clutching a boarding pass in its paws caused a lot of noise. This is an out of the ordinary situation, even taking into account the fact that the kangaroo was accompanied by a person, because keeping them as pets forbidden. All these facts immediately led many Internet users to believe that the video was either staged or generated by AI. 

At first glance, there are no signs of neural network generation in the video. Unlike numerous AI videos - for example, with giant anacondasfloating in the Amazon - everything (except for the situation itself) looks quite natural and realistic. The passenger's hands seem to become blurred during active gestures, but this can be attributed to the low quality of the video. However, if you stop the video and take a closer look, you can see that there is no flight information on the ticket that the animal is clutching, and unreadable characters are a sure sign of AI, which is not yet very good at generating text on the image. It is also impossible to understand what the characters in the video are saying, although some Internet users who do not speak English may attribute this to a strong Australian accent. Analysis in Hive Moderation, a service for identifying content generated by neural networks, showed that with a 99% probability the video was created using AI.

The original video was published on Instagram on May 25, 2025 by a user with the nickname Infinite Unreality. There is no mention of AI in the text of the post, only the comment: “No kangaroos on board.” Instagram has a feature where content can be labeled as AI-generated. The author added such a label to the video, but it is easy to miss - the inscription alternates with an indication of the audio source, and when viewed in a browser on a computer or in full screen mode in a smartphone application, it is not displayed at all. So it is not surprising that some viewers did not notice the mark and mistook the video for being filmed. There are other similar generated videos on the Infinite Unreality page - for example, with hippopotamus, sitting in an airplane seat (obviously, he came across more accommodating flight attendants). Each video contains a unique signature of the author - an infinity sign, and there is one in the video with a kangaroo.

Thus, the cute video of a kangaroo at the airport that has flooded social networks is a very realistic and high-quality, but still the work of AI. The user who published the video did not hide the fact that the video was created by a neural network, and put the appropriate tag on Instagram. Apparently, due to the features of the social network interface, many users did not notice it and distributed the video as if it were real.

Cover photo: screenshot

Not true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Is it true that the word "kangaroo" means "I don't understand" in the Aboriginal language of Australia?
2. Is it true that at Salzburg airport there is a special counter for passengers who confuse Austria and Australia?
3. Putin on his knee, the Pope's down jacket and Trump's arrest: how to recognize viral photos created by neural networks