A video recently posted to the social media platform X appeared to show a tree gushing water … but there’s more to the story.
You can, if you wish, cheat by scrolling down, and learn the secret behind the video right away. Of you can watch the first video below, without explanation, and see if you can figure it out for yourself.
First, the video. This is NOT, however, the post that’s received over 6 million views. That’s another version of it, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
First, see if you can spot what’s really going on in this video.
Here’s a hint: The commentary provided on the video and in the post itself is just not even close.
View this post on Instagram
“This is a kind of tree that stores water up for the dry season,” the post from The Regrowth Project claimed.
I’m no botanist — clearly, neither is whoever wrote this post, as he referred to the tree’s trunk as a “stem” — but I think it’s safe to say that just about any large plant growing in an area with an annual “dry season” either stores up water for itself or somehow goes dormant until the rains return. However, while some of them store the water in a form accessible to humans, I don’t think any of them turn into organic fire hydrants when cut open.
About the only thing this poster got correct was when he wrote that “[s]omehow the tree was gashed open and now it’s essentially bleeding out it’s [sic] water supply.”
That’s true, so far as it goes — and the secret behind the incident recorded here depends on correctly identifying that “somehow.”
“Praying for my boy as he attempts to last through the dry season,” he added. I hate to break it to him, but that tree is firewood by now, as is clear if you understand what was really happening in this video.
Trees can absorb between 10 and 150 gallons of water daily, yet of all the water absorbed by plants, less than 5% remains in the plant for growth. They rely on available water in the soil to “rehydrate” during the nighttime hours, replacing the water loss during the daytime hours… pic.twitter.com/IG0k6MX5Jx
— H0W_THlNGS_W0RK (@HowThingsWork_) April 26, 2024
As the community note on that X post makes clear, this stream of water is not a natural event at all. However, like a magician practicing misdirection, the video’s attention on the water — rather than on the gash that’s obviously running through most of the tree trunk, which I missed completely until my second viewing.
Once you’ve seen that, the explanation for the video — and that was the one with more than 6 million views now — becomes clear.
That tree is being cut with a high pressure water jet. ???? pic.twitter.com/V3CzQ3vXHG
— The-Market-Maker (@ProjectCaracas) April 26, 2024
Which just goes to show you that Elon Musk’s X is doing a much better job of highlighting “disinformation” on social media than Meta’s Instagram is.