One man in China was in for a paws-itively shocking surprise when he discovered that the puppies he had raised for the past two years were actually a couple of endangered black bears.
Wang Kaiyu, a resident of a village in Yunnan, bought what he thought were two adorable pooches from a Vietnamese worker near the China-Vietnam border in 2013. For two years, he doted on his pets, washing and grooming them every day. The pair–a female and a male–were remarkably well-behaved, but they eventually started displaying some decidedly less dog-like signs, including never barking, growing to weigh over 100 lbs. each, and killing and eating some of Wang’s chickens.
It wasn’t until Wang saw a pamphlet about endangered wild animals that he realized he had raised two Asian black bears, a Category 2 protected species, by accident. He decided to give the cubs up to the Forest Public Security Bureau in the hopes that they would be able to re-home them. On June 30, local police officers came to remove the bears–who were reportedly rolling around, frolicking with each other, and acting like a couple of “naughty children,” according to China News–and take them to the Yunnan Wild Animal Rescue Center. Feng Lingui, a spokesman for the center, said the furry siblings are healthy and doing well in their new home.
via [Daily Mail, China News]