Recently, the behavior of a sun bear in East China's Hangzhou Zoo caught the attention of numerous netizens. Photo: web

Recently, the behavior of a sun bear in East China's Hangzhou Zoo caught the attention of numerous netizens. According to media reports, a netizen posted a video on July 27, claiming that the sun bear seems to be a human dressed as a bear. In the video, the bear could actually stand up and interact with visitors, leading to many netizens praising the bear for its human-like qualities.

Subsequently, staff at the Hangzhou Zoo responded, insisting that the bear was absolutely not being impersonated by a human. They stated that during the high temperatures of summer, even a person standing under the sun would have difficulty donning thick fur, let alone dressing like a bear. 

"It's definitely a real animal, not an impersonation. Our zoo is state-owned and would never allow such a situation," a zoo employee said. The temperature in the heat of summer has already reached 40 C. "If you make a person wear thick fur, they would certainly collapse in a few minutes," he said.

Sun bears are the size of large dogs, standing at most 1.3 meters tall on their hind legs, compared with up to 2.8 meters for grizzlies and other species, according to the zoo.

It's worth mentioning that similar situations of bears standing and interacting have also occurred in other zoos around the world. A black bear at Shanghai Wild Animal Park once displayed similar behavior, amazing the visitors. Many experts believe that such behavior may be a result of training, enabling animals to acquire some human-like skills to increase the visitors' viewing pleasure and participation.