In a shocking incident, a family in China found out that an adorable furry "puppy" they had been raising for two years was not a pet dog, but an endangered bear. According to New York Post, Su Yun, who lives in a village in Yunnan Province, bought what she was led to believe was a Tibetan Mastiff puppy while on vacation back in 2016. However, after two years, when the animal grew up to be 250 pounds (roughly 114 kg) and began walking on two legs, the family grew suspicious and found that the "dog" was actually an endangered Asiatic Black Bear.
Tibetan mastiffs are huge dogs with black-brown coats, similar to an Asiatic black bear. They can weigh up to 150 pounds, which is approximately 69 kg.
According to the outlet, Ms Yun said that she was immediately struck by her pooch's insatiable appetite, which had him wolfing down a box of fruits and two buckets of noodles daily. "The more he grew, the more like a bear he looked," Ms Yun told a Chinese news outlet. After raising the animal for two years, she then began to suspect that her "dog" was actually a black bear.
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Once Ms Yun realised that the private domestication of wild animals was illegal, she immediately reached out to authorities. The officials quickly identified her supposed dog as an Asiatic black bear, which is classified as a vulnerable species.
According to Post, the authorities revealed that the bear weighed over 400 pounds (approximately 182 kg) and was one meter (3 feet) tall. They were so intimidated by the animal, who had lived in Ms Yun's house this entire time, that they anaesthetized it before bringing it to a wildlife shelter. The bear was taken to the Yunnan Wildlife Rescue Centre where it underwent observation.
Notably, a fully grown male Asiatic bear, also known as a Himalayan bear or moon bear, can weigh up to 400 pounds. This bizarre story was first reported by the Independent in 2018 but has gone viral again this week.
