Did a Qatari girl really buy a zoo and release thousands of captive pigeons?

If you are active on social media, you should have seen this video purportedly showing a ‘Qatari girl, her heart filled with compassion, buying an Austrian zoo and releasing thousands of captive pigeons from two mega trucks.’

It is true that there is a fascination around the world for anything and everything Qatar does in the public sphere. And sometimes, like in this instance, totally unrelated stuff gets attributed to people from the country.

This news is obviously a hoax. These are no pigeons bred in captivity. On the other hand, they are racing pigeons carefully bred for competition. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the start of a pigeon race.

“They are racing pigeons being released in a pigeon race. Note the colours. All those exotic birds from a zoo would be vibrant in colour. If you note the colouring, they are mostly blue and white, they are blue bars. They go home, they don’t do anything to the ecosystem. They can fly as far as 600 miles and be home on the same day.

“I grew up with it as my father raced pigeons from age 11 until the day he died. You don’t just release hundreds of different exotic birds. It would be a redundant enterprise. Exotic birds could die within days of being let go like that. It would be senseless.

“No zoo would let just a rich girl to buy up all the birds. I noted the flight pattern as well. They all go up, and circle in unison then they circle. That is because they are going in the direction to get home,” said a comment on the Youtube video.

The video was uploaded last year and a quick search on the Internet shows that this news has appeared nowhere. Such an acquisition and action should have been big news, but there’s hardly any reference to it anywhere.

It all points to just one thing… this is pure hoax.