In the summer of 2025, a recording from an outdoor surveillance camera went viral on the Internet, which allegedly recorded a bear having fun on a trampoline at night in the courtyard of a residential building. We have verified the accuracy of this video.
A video of a jumping bear appeared on the Internet at the end of July. For example, on VKontakte this recording posted publics "Cat | Animal news"(1.2 million views at the time of writing this analysis) and "Rhymes and punches"(95,000). “No one can see what the bears are doing yet,” the authors of these posts joked. Some Russian media also reported on the video. For example, edition News.ru in his Telegram channel (37,000 views) indicated that a wild animal jumping on a trampoline was allegedly filmed in the USA. Similar posts published and other Russian-language Telegram channels. The video became popular not only in RuNet: for example, only one English-language video with the same jumping bear received more than 71 million views in TikTok and 4.6 million in Instagram*.
Videos of bears on trampolines are actually not uncommon. For example, since the 2010s, residents of the American state of Connecticut have repeatedly observed a similar picture. How explained local authorities, the bear population in the region had more than doubled over the previous 20 years and the animals began to visit courtyards more often. Relevant photo And video with club feet, climbed in on trampolines, more than once shared NBC Connecticut TV channel. Bears were also caught doing other “human” things - for example, one of them filmed lying in a hammock.
But what’s unusual in the viral video is how the animal actually jumps on the trampoline. So, on numerous images from Connecticut, animals simply lie, sit, or walk on a stretched canvas. Similar behavior of these animals was captured in videos filmed in other states, for example Wisconsin And North Carolina.
However, you can find a recording of a bear actually making one jump on a trampoline, but he does not do it of his own free will. In 2003, in Montana, a TV channel KPAX-TV led reportage from the city of Missoula, where a bear climbed a tall tree. Local authorities decided to release him - they placed a trampoline under him, and then shot the animal with a tranquilizer. Eyewitnesses witnessed the bear fall onto the trampoline, jump high, and then collapse to the ground. The next morning the animal was released into the wild, and the video about its rescue became incredibly popular throughout the country.
However, a video of a bear jumping on a trampoline that went viral in the summer of 2025 shows signs that it was generated by a neural network. A blogger under the nickname showtoolsai, who analyzes such videos, spoke about them. “The bear was created by AI, but it’s not easy to notice because it appears to be recorded on a door camera. Such cameras convey less color, sometimes shooting without colors at all. They have very strong noise reduction,” told showtoolsai. However, the fake is revealed by the unnatural movements of the bear - for example, its paws sometimes disappear and change shape, which is most noticeable in the last seconds of the video. In addition, during the animal’s jumps, the light ball (probably meant to be a ball) did not move, but seemed to be glued to the canvas.
On social networks you can find many more similar highly realistic videos with bears on a trampoline, which were also generated by neural networks. For example, one of these video on the Lifestory YouTube channel received 2.7 million views. “The bear climbed onto the trampoline and started jumping, the second bear watched from the side until the trampoline broke. The video has gone viral, but in the comments people are arguing: is this reality or a neural network? Some are sure that this is real, others believe that this is fiction,” the author of the channel commented on the post. Another video clip published a public page on VKontakte “Gifs"(56,000 views). “The bear fell through the trampoline: an unexpected and funny moment,” the caption reads, although in fact the animal did not fall through, and the canvas completely tore when the animal did not touch it.
Fake videos of jumping bears are sometimes found in color. For example, on one Of these, you can see an unreadable word on the trampoline canvas - this is a common mistake that reveals AI content (however, the author himself admitted that the video is not real). And on friend right after the animal landed and the trampoline broke, the back of the bear turned into its head.
Other animals also became heroes of similar fakes. For example, Telegram channel "Rhymes and punches“(167,000 views) posted a video with the following caption: “The rabbits, following the bear, decided to try the trampoline with the whole family.” However, even in this case, signs of a neural network can be seen with the naked eye upon careful examination of the frames. Thus, some rabbits’ bodies become deformed, and one of the animals sitting on the canvas suddenly disappears altogether. However, on TikTok it is video received 234 million views.
How reports the above-mentioned blogger showtoolsai, fake videos of animals on trampolines flooded social networks shortly after they appeared on TikTok in early June got infected real video clip, filmed back in 2022 in California. Then an outdoor surveillance camera recorded a group of coyotes playing on a trampoline in the courtyard of a residential building at night. One of the predators actually seemed to be trying to jump.
According to the media project Storyful, the peak of popularity of such fakes occurred at the end of July. “When the average user is just scrolling through their TikTok feed, they’re not looking for fake videos—they think they’re watching real videos,” says James Lowe, editor-in-chief of Storyful. “The increasing sophistication of AI-generated videos means it’s easier than ever to be fooled.” However, you can also find frankly humorous publications in which people jump on a trampoline sharks, elephant and even robot trampoline.
Thus, the video of a bear jumping on a trampoline that went viral on the RuNet was generated by a neural network. It became part of a global trend in social networks, in which the authors created similar videos using AI.
To avoid falling for such fakes, you should pay attention to the movements and shape of objects in the frame, lighting and captions. In addition, when neural networks try to reproduce the date and time of shooting, they often are wrong indicating seconds - the counter shows arbitrary, inconsistent numbers.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Instagram and Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities and symbols are prohibited in Russia.
Cover photo: edited screenshot of viral video
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