I’m confident these rumours start as someone making a joke and then the less smart of us taking off with it.

It might sound like an implausible gambit. But zoos in China have courted public ridicule in the past for trying to pass off pets like dogs as wild animals.

In 2013, a city zoo in the central Henan province angered visitors by trying to pass off a Tibetan Mastiff dog as a lion. Visitors who had approached the enclosure expressed shock when they heard the “lion” bark.

Visitors at another Chinese zoo, in Sichuan province, were shocked to discover a golden retriever sitting in a cage labeled as an African lion enclosure.

A zoo in eastern China has denied suggestions that some of its bears were people dressed in costume after videos of a Malayan sun bear standing on its hind legs – and looking uncannily human – went viral, fueling rumors and conspiracy theories on Chinese social media.

I heard the visitors to the zoo were bears in people costumes. It’s worth noting that zoo officials have yet to comment on this.

I’m betting a decent part of it is the bear(s) just seeing people and how they behave every day, not too surprising they might imitate it. Animals are intelligent too after all

I don’t know if it’s true, but the “bear” doesn’t even blink once

There is a scene in the Anime ‘Cat Planet Cuties’ where a maid is desperately trying to convince the protagonist that a human is NOT inside a HUMAN sized robot suit (when it plainly IS)

Jump in and find out.