Human Acting As Bear In Costume? China Zoo Replies To Allegations
A Chinese zoo debunks accusations that its star animal is a man in a bear costume.
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If you are familiar with the Korean film, Secret Zoo, you would get a glimpse of how difficult it can be to financially maintain a zoo. Not only is it expensive to get the animals, but it can also be quite pricey to maintain them.
However, one would not anticipate zoo caretakers to go to such extremes as movie characters do, which is to have personnel disguise themselves as the animals. Well, one zoo in China has been accused of doing so.
Hangzhou Zoo has come under fire after a netizen recorded a clip of its black bear. The animal, which is the zoo’s main star, was seen standing on its two hind legs on a rock while waving its paws at tourists.
This, in return, made many netizens believe that the animal was a human in a costume. As reported by Jimu News, they argued that its movements were too human-like. In fact, one pointed out how “Its posture is more (upright) than humans!”
Another commented; “Bears’ forelimbs cannot be spread out to the sides. This is undoubtedly a human being.”
Whereas, one Weibo user claimed that the bear “looks like it’s wearing a leather jacket.”
The Chinese zoo has since come forward to debunk the accusations. In their statement online, the zoo cited the temperature as its defense, noting that if it were a person wearing the suit, they would not have been able to stand the 40 degrees Celsius heat.
A common misconception?
This, unfortunately, is not the first time a Chinese zoo has been accused of doing this. In 2019, Yangcheng Wild Animal World in Changzhou, grabbed headlines after a visitor caught its two zookeepers dressed as gorillas.
According to Daily Mail, the parent who attended the zoo, witnessed the staff jumping around the gorilla enclosure in full-body costumes. The organisation defended itself, arguing that the “human gorillas” were merely for entertainment.
And that it did not expect the “entertainment” to cause misunderstanding among the visitors.
And in a 2013 CNN report, a zoo in Luohe, Henan supposedly tried to fool customers by passing off a large hairy dog as a lion.
The incident caught wind after a visitor told Bejing Youth Daily that she was greeted by a dog instead of a lion when she approached the cage that was marked “African lion”.
Other animals in the park were mismarked too. Another dog, for instance, was placed in a cage for a wolf, and a white fox was caged in a leopard enclosure.
According to the park, the substitution was only temporary and was done for unspecified reasons.
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