Skeptics were right last month when a viral video of an eagle snatching a baby in a Montreal park turned out to be a hoax.
But now the student creators and their school are making good on their cyberprank by donating the proceeds from the video’s Google AdSense account towards a scholarship fund for the 3D animation and design school, the Canadian Press reports.
“Forty-one million is certainly quite a lot of eyeballs on that video,” Andrew Swartz, a spokesperson for Google Canada told the Canadian Press describing the number of views the viral video accrued, adding that many successful YouTube channels make six-figures annually.
Google AdSense is an advertising program that allows publishers to generate revenue from their content based on the number of page views.
The school is still waiting for a check from Google to determine the amount of money the video has made, Claude Arsenault, the school’s spokesperson told the Canadian Press.
The “Golden Eagle Snatches Kid” video, which shows an eagle swooping down, grabbing a child and dropping him a few feet away, has racked up more than 41 million hits on YouTube since being posted on Dec. 18. Three students from Montreal’s Centre NAD created the minute-long clip where both the eagle and the child were created using 3D animation, according to the school’s statement.