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