It is quoting a Chinese news report that while elephants did recently walk through a village in the province, their presence is not unusual. And the pictures of the elephants passed out is not the beasts in question.
The photos have since been shared widely on Twitter, garnering thousands of likes.
National Geographic also said another story last week, that dolphins and swans had been seen in Venice as a result of the city's waterways being empty of tourist traffic, was also untrue.
It said the dolphins were filmed at a port in Sardinia, while swans regularly appear in the canals of Burano, a small island in the greater Venice metropolitan area.
This story was amended on Monday, March 23 to report that the original claims about the elephants has been debunked
