Twitter post from Moonlit Sentences  Arizona DOT installed a wildlife camera at Route 87's pedestrian crossing outside Payson last September. Standard deer migration count. After six months, they had footage of zero deer and 147 clips of the same coyote pressing the crosswalk button with its paw at sunrise. The animal waits for the walk signal. Steps into the road. Crosses at a trot. Every single time. Biologists believe it learned by watching hikers at the adjacent trailhead. "It's not random," said the lead researcher. "That coyote understands cause and effect better than half our interns." DOT voted unanimously to keep the camera running. The coyote hasn't jaywalked once.
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[–] 324 points 3 months ago (46 children)

I think this is fake and an AI generated image. The only place I can find this story is on slop YouTube channels (just showing this screenshot), it isn't anywhere else online. The image also isn't anywhere else that the Google image search can find, and this ai detector that seems accurate in my experience finds it suspicious

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  • [–] 162 points 3 months ago (11 children)

    It’s very clearly an AI image to me. Just look at the road lines. A double solid yellow line on the right side of the road is not something that happens in the USA. The double yellow line would be in the center of the road. And if this was a divided highway with the coyote being in the center median, then the yellow line would be a single solid line.

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  • [–] 44 points 3 months ago (7 children)

    And what kind of pedestrian crossing looks like that?

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  • [–] 38 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    And why is there one in the middle of nowhere

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  • [–] 34 points 3 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 19 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I do believe I used to watch a documentary about a Coyote in the desert, and quite a bit of that involved it on a paved road as well. I do believe it understood more complicated things than just pressing crosswalk buttons, if I recall it flat out knew how to place orders from an Acme Catalog an assemble quite a few fairly complex machines.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago

    As someone who lived in the Mojave desert for nearly a decade, that part isn't that weird. Double yellow and weird spacing in the crosswalk are pretty obvious but a crosswalk that appears to be in the middle of nowhere is quite standard where I was at.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago

    Yellow lines always separate directions of travel. So yellow lines will only be down the middle of the road. White lines will be in between lanes travelling the same direction, and along the edges of the road.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    there is an intersection near me (east coast USA) with one lane on one side of 2 yellow lines and 3 lanes on the other side. It's definitely possible. It does have turning arrows, but those would be a bit out of view from this angle I think (they're kinda far back). The picture is still very implausible though because of the very uneven lane widths and the weird crosswalk paint. The closest lane looks like it could only fit half a car.

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  • [–] 31 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    The language/sentence structure and account name are also very suspicious. I want it to be real so bad though

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  • [–] 26 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    The road has a solid middle stripe and a double-yellow line at the shoulder.

    100% fake.

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  • [–] 16 points 3 months ago

    also notice how they try to sound like newspaper article without saying anything specific.

    genuine news texts will say "person x from institution y says: >...<" not "biologists believe" and "lead researcher says".

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  • [–] 55 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    No... it's totally legit.

    Here is another image of the same coyote from a different angle that I totally didn't just render on my PC in 30 seconds.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    That's actually a more convincing image. The one looks like it's hiding something because it's so low-res

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I think this is fake and an AI generated image.

    Didn't even need to study the picture. The premise alone is ridiculous

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    I've seen foxes use the crosswalk, but never push the button. If the story stayed at "This animal is smart enough to know that it won't get hit if it stays in the little white lines" then I probably wouldn't have clocked it. Still, what a horrible, dishonest thing to do.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago

    Was about to comment that if this story was true and not all made up, it'd be really funny.

    However my bullshit meter was also blaring because of how many youtube shorts nowadays are about animals acting like humans and people just eat it up without questioning it.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (10 children)

    I looked as well, Gemini said it was real, then I asked for sources and it said it was not true and just a meme.

    Same query except asking for sources:

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  • [–] 19 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Gemini is worse than useless when it comes to this sort of thing. It's simultaneously the most confidently-wrong of any AI model and also the most willing to fold to even the smallest amount of criticism.

    It will tell you whatever you want to hear, every time, regardless of the actual reality.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I always get a kick out of people getting frustrated when they SHOW AN AI SOMETHING and then ask if it's "real."

    Ai: "Of course its, 'real.' Bitch, you just showed it to me."

    Stunning amount of hammer hate coming from people who aim for their thumbs.

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