Our bears are real, a Chinese zoo says, denying they are 'humans in disguise'
A screenshot (left) from a Douyin video of the sun bear standing on its hind legs in Hangzhou Zoo and a photo of the animal. (Photos: Douyin/xiaotongtong, WeChat/Hangzhou Zoo)
BEIJING: A zoo in eastern China is denying suggestions some of its bears might be people in costumes after photos and videos of the animals standing like humans circulated online.
The sun bears from Malaysia are smaller than other bears and look different but are the real thing, the Hangzhou Zoo said on Monday (Jul 31) on its social media account.
“Some people think I stand like a person," said the posting, written from the bear’s point of view. “It seems you don’t understand me very well.”
Visitor numbers at the zoo went up by 30 per cent to around 20,000 a day since a video of a bear, named Angela, became a trending topic on Chinese social media over the weekend, Zhejiang province-based Chao News reported.
"After seeing this bear standing up on the internet, I wanted to see how it looks in real life, so I came here," said a man surnamed You, who added he had only half-believed the video he saw online, Chao News reported.
"After we saw the video on the Internet, we specially took the high-speed train from Suzhou to come over to see the bear," another visitor, Qian Ming, told a Hangzhou TV station. "We travelled overnight last night to get here. The bears are so cute."
In the widely-shared video posted last Thursday, the sun bear can be seen standing on its hind legs and stretching its neck out as it faces visitors watching from outside its enclosure, before sitting back down.
It was when Angela was standing up that some netizens said she looked like someone wearing a bear suit.
"If this is fake, it deserves an Oscar for special effects," said one user on the Weibo microblog platform.
“Because of the way they stand, some people online question whether they are ‘humans in disguise',” the newspaper Hangzhou Daily said.
The zoo has sought to refute the rumours in posts on its official WeChat account and in interviews with local media, saying that Angela is "definitely not a human".
"Our zoo is government-run, so that kind of situation would not happen," a member of staff said, according to local media.
"The temperature in the summer is nearly 40 degrees, if you put on a fur suit, you certainly couldn't last more than a few minutes without lying down."
Animal rights group PETA said that this incident shows how all zoo animals, including this bear, should be moved to sanctuaries and wildlife reserves that "prioritise the well-being of animals".
"These highly intelligent and social beings deserve to live freely and thrive in their natural environment, not used as mere spectacles for human entertainment," PETA Asia vice-president Jason Baker, said on Tuesday.
Sun bears are the size of large dogs, standing at most 1.3m tall on their hind legs, compared with up to 2.8m for grizzlies and other species, according to the zoo.
Other Chinese zoos have been accused of trying to pass off dogs dyed to look like wolves or African cats, and donkeys painted to look like zebras.
