While looking up different hoaxes online, i came across an appealing email scam. It was sent to people with a picture of a tree, a 'Baobab' tree (which is renowned to possess the largest tree trunks of the world) which is located in Andra Pradesh, a very dense forest in India. Now a picture of this tree could be very much believable, it's an aspect of this such tree that so deceiving. The email claimed that the tree had amazing animal carvings carved into its trunk. Not only that, but it was claimed that the carvings were completely natural, and that humans had no part in making them.
One thing that we have learned throughout psychology is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary claims in order to be believeable. This tree claim definently counts as an "extraordinary claim". But is there extraordinary evidence to back it up? Not so fast, using another critical thinking principle (Occam's razor) we can provide a different explanation. In fact, this tree isn't even an actual living tree, instead it is an artifical tree located in Disney's Animal Kingdom in Flordia, not India. The tree was entirely man-made. This just goes to prove that not everything we receive is true. Instead, we should look into everything in order to find out what we are able to believe.
the link i used is: http://www.hoax-slayer.com/mysterious-tree.shtml
Leave a comment