China's Hangzhou Zoo has a colony of Malaysian sun bears. A video of the bears on display went viral in the past couple of weeks because of the pose one of the bears took, which you can see in the picture above. The bear looks suspiciously like a human dressed in a bear suit. Notice the angle of the back paws as it stands, and the wrinkling of the velvet-like fur around the butt. The idea that the zoo might be trying to pull a fast one caused the video to spread like wildfire on Chinese social media.
The zoo responded by identifying the bear as a sun bear named Angela, and not a staff member dressed in a bear costume. Zoo authorities pointed out that sun bears are the smallest bear, and wouldn't be more than 50 inches (1.3 meters) tall standing on its hind legs. Besides, the temperature at the zoo was 104F (40C), which would be exhausting for a human in a fur suit. You can see in this seven-year-old video from South Korea that when bears stand up, their hind legs and paws indeed look like human legs.
The Hangzhou Zoo got the last laugh. The viral video spurred a lot of people to make a trip to Zhejiang province and see the bear for themselves. Attendance has been up 30% since the controversy. -via Metafilter