Chinese Zoo Denies Its Bear Is Actually a Human in a Costume

A video of a Malayan sun bear seen begging for food from onlookers in a zoo has raised questions about the authenticity of the beast.

A real bear? Or a human in an ill-fitting bear suit.

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The “bear” looks even more fake in the video.

The zoo swears it’s a real bear. But it’s entirely believable that it’s not because these are Communists. If they can create an unlikely origin for COVID-19 — that it was created in a U.S. military lab — they can create the illusion of a Malayan sun bear.

“Some people think I stand like a human, and it seems that you don’t understand me that much,” Hangzhou Zoo wrote on its official social media account on Sunday from the perspective of the bear in the video, named Angela. “Previously, some tourists thought that I was too tiny to be a bear. I have to emphasize again: I am a Malayan sun bear! Not a black bear! Not a dog! A sun bear!”

NBCNews:

Trending topics on the subject attracted millions of views on the platform as people questioned whether the bear was a human in disguise, given its behavior as well as the visible folds of fur on its body that resemble humans wearing ill-fitting clothing.

But an expert told NBC News that such speculation was unfounded.

The animal in the video is “a sun bear for sure,” said Wong Siew Te, a wildlife biologist and the founder of the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre in Malaysia. He has been researching the animal for about 25 years.

“Sun bears could be very human-like,” he said. “They stand like humans and walk like humans,” adding that sun bear mothers could carry babies with their hands and walk by their hind legs.

This may be true. I’ve never seen a Malayan sun bear before. But this wouldn’t be the first time that China tried to pull a fast one in one of their zoos. In 2013, they tried to substitute a dog for a lion.

CNN:

A zoo in China has angered visitors by trying to pass off a hairy dog as a lion, Chinese state media reported.

A visitor, surnamed Liu, told the state-run Beijing Youth Daily she discovered the fraud when visiting a zoo in a park in Louhe, a city in the central province of Henan, with her son.

As they approached the cage marked “African lion,” they were shocked to hear the beast inside emit a bark.

🦁 🐶 As they approached the cage marked "African lion," they were shocked to hear the beast inside emit a bark.

Chinese zoo angers visitors by passing off hairy Tibetan mastiff dog as lion | CNN https://t.co/6X1laruKMH pic.twitter.com/jeyFPkgU6V

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