Asiatic Black Bear. Image by Dhritiman Mukherjee
In a shocking incident, a family found out that the animal they have been raising for two years was not a pet dog, but an endangered bear. The animal was identified as an endangered Asiatic Black Bear. A woman named Su Yun had brought the animal to her home in Yunnan, a village in China, while she was on vacation in 2016. She was surprised by how much her pet was eating. She and her family thought that their pet was a Tibetan mastiff. They became suspicious when the animal kept growing, and eventually started to weigh more than 250 pounds. It even started to walk on its hind legs.
Su Yun told China News, “The more he grew, the more like a bear he looked.” She also added that she was scared of bears. Eventually, Su Yun called the authorities and they confirmed that her suspicion was right. The bear is now in the hands of Yunnan Wildlife Rescue Centre. While the family was keeping the animal as a pet for so long, the staff were seemingly so scared of the creature that they sedated it before its transportation.
As mentioned in a report by The Sun, Asiatic Black Bear is very profitable in the black market and can easily be sold for thousands of dollars illegally. These animals have been used for Asian traditional medicine. A chemical named ursodeoxycholic acid is found in the bile of the animal and ursodeoxycholic acid is used to treat medical problems like liver disease.
Surprisingly, Su Yun is not the only one in China who has committed the mistake of bringing the wrong pet. In March 2018, a man from the same province allegedly brought a bear that he found in a forest as he assumed it to be a stray dog.
Another woman named Wang from China was raising a domestic fox, thinking it to be a Japanese Spitz dog. She raised it for months and saw strange behaviour in the animal, such as refusing to eat dog food and never barking. She told the local media, “The fur got thicker when it reached three months old. Its face became pointy and its tail grew longer than that of a normal dog.”
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