In 2013, in a city zoo in Henan province, China, visitors were surprised and frankly offended when the lion barked. Nobody likes to be played for a sucker and the patrons must have been embarrassed when it became clear that the creature masquerading as a lion turned out to be a Tibetan Mastiff. In all fairness, it was a pretty big dog. It just wasn’t a lion.
Then, in Sichuan province, a zoo tried to pass off a golden retriever as a lion but visitors were not fooled. It was obvious the zoo keepers were, uh, lyin’. The clumsy hoax sounds like something a couple of bored fourth graders might subject a family pet to on a long summer day.
So, you can understand the skepticism of some patrons in the Hangzhou Zoo where a “sun bear” walked nimbly around on its hind legs and waved to visitors. Photos of “Angela”, the slim bi-pedal Malayan sun bear do look suspiciously like a guy in a bear suit. But we are assured there is absolutely no truth to the rumors that Angela was observed eating her lunch with chopsticks and when she bent over to tie “her” shoes, you could see the elastic band of the boxer shorts.
Zoo officials were quick to deny that Angela was a human in a bear costume, announcing in a written statement as if from the bear herself, “I’m Angela, the sun bear. I got a call after work yesterday from the head of the zoo asking if I was being lazy and skipped work today and found a human to take my place. Let me reiterate again to everyone that I am a sun bear….” Well, there you have it, right from the bear’s own mouth.
And speaking of which, close-up photos of Angela’s mouth clearly show her formidable pointy bear teeth and ten-inch-long tongue. It turns out, Angela is not a human doing an imitation of a bear, but a bear doing a remarkably good imitation of a person.
To discover that Angela is a genuine bonified bear was kind of a surprise. We are continuously being fooled by hoaxes. Take the discovery of the “furry trout” or the Big Foot video. In the 18th Century, a woman named Mary Toft convinced her doctors she had given birth to rabbits. In 2009, Richard and Mayumi Heene launched a home-made helium balloon and called 911, falsely reporting their six-year-old son was aboard. After emergency services chased it down, the boy let it slip that it was all a publicity stunt.
The recent congressional hearing on UFO’s seemed almost fake. So-called whistleblower David Charles Grusch testified that the government possesses crashed alien spacecraft and “non-human biologics”—specimens of dead aliens—without offering proof. These days “deep fake” artificial intelligence software can perfectly counterfeit anybody’s voice or likeness. It’s getting so we don’t know what is real and what isn’t. Is Angela an actual bear or some guy in a bear suit? Who knows? And does it really matter?