A rumor that circulated online in July 2025 claimed an Iowa farmer found unicorn bones while plowing his field. Snopes readers searched the site to see if the rumor was true.
The claim received millions of views on Facebook (archived) and in multiple videos (archived) on TikTok
However, searches of
Instead, the apparent source of the rumor was a video from the TikTok account realscarytok (archived). The audio in the video was identical to the audio in the videos with millions of views mentioned above, and realscarytok's video better matched the audio, with the people interviewed in the story actually appearing on screen in their video.
In the caption of realscarytok's video were the hashtags "#ai" and "#satire
Most of the videos realscarytok posted to their account were similar in style, using AI to generate videos of fictional news stories. The videos regularly included hashtags and captions indicating that they were satirical and generated by AI.
Although this rumor was untrue, news outlets have reported on similar stories. The Sun, a British tabloid, reported on a fake unicorn skull found in England earlier the same month as the rumor about the Iowa farmer spread. A local news station in Des Moines reported on a story about an Iowa man who found a prehistoric animal bone. CNN once reported on the discovery of the remains of an ancient one-horned creature in Siberia.
For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.