Man didn't know that his pet dogs were bears

[Pirelli]

http://view.inews.qq.com/a/SSH2015070104093803

A man in Yunnan raised two black bears that he thought were just normal dogs. The “dogs” turned out to be bears that are protected by Chinese environmental law.

One day back in 2013, Wang was planting banana trees near the Vietnamese border. A Vietnamese person brought over a handsome pair of dogs for sale, and Wang decided to buy them. For the next two years, the dogs were well-behaved and not picky with their food by any means. Wang took special care of them, giving them a bath and combing their fur every day. With passing time, the two dogs oddly kept growing and their appetites kept pace too. The dogs’ behavior became increasingly uncanny, and they eventually didn’t seem much like dogs at all.

Once, after having realized that his two dogs were actually bears, Wang noticed some additional information from the local forest reserve about the particular types of bears he was raising. It turned out that those bears belong to the level 2 category of protected animals in China, meaning that his actions already counted as a violation of the law.

After discussing the situation with his family, Wang decided to give the bears to the forest authority. The animals have since been taken in by a wild animal rescue center in Yunnan.

http://view.inews.qq.com/a/SSH2015070104093803

 

[Pirelli]

‘Puppies’ raised by farmer in China’s Yunnan province turn out to be endangered moon bears

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 02 July, 2015, 5:11pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 02 July, 2015, 6:06pm

Ellis Liang [email protected]

One of the two black bears, who were raised by a farmer until they got too big to handle, relaxes in his enclosure at the animal rescue centre. Photo: Chinanews

A villager in China’s Yunnan province recently discovered that the “dogs” he raised for two years are a pair of endangered black bears, local media reported.

Wang Kaiyu said that two years ago, he was planting bananas on a plot of land near the Vietnam border, when he met a Vietnamese hawker selling puppies, the China News Service reported.

Wang bought two, but as they grew bigger, he began to notice that they did not look like local dogs and behaved strangely.

Recently, Wang became aware of the Forest Public Security Bureau’s publicity campaign to protect wild animals and realised he had unwittingly raised two Asian black bears, also called moon bears for the white crescent patch on their chests, which are considered a vulnerable species.

He called the forest officers to inform them that he had bears in his home and asked for help in dealing with them.

When they arrived at the scene, they saw the bears were enclosed in a cage on the third-floor balcony, moving around restlessly.

Wang said the bears behaved very well for the first two years. He bathed them every day and combed their fur. They were not picky eaters, but occasionally preyed on the household chickens.

Wang and his family decided to surrender the animals in the hope of finding them a more suitable home.

On Tuesday, the bears were transferred to a protected animal habitat. A representative of the wild animal rescue centre confirmed that the two bears, one male and one female, were in good health.

Moon bears have gained international recognition in recent years because of their use in harvesting bile for traditional medicine. The practice often involves keeping bears bound for life in cages too small for them to move as bile is extracted via tubes inserted into their gallbladders, according to the rescue charity Animals Asia Foundation.

As a result of campaigns by animal rights activists in Asia and other countries, many bears have been rescued and homed peacefully in rehabilitation centres. But thousands more bears are stuck in farms in China, Vietnam, Korea and Laos, the foundation said.

 

[smartieschoco]

So cute.