The matter ran through the networks and became a matter of viral geostrategy.
The Hangzhou Zoo had to issue a statement to deny that the animal that greeted visitors, standing up, was not a human disguised as a bear. He was a sun bear and all those taunts hurled at China were meaningless. If true, that trap left the Beijing government in a very bad place, already in the Western spotlight for its political and commercial practices.
Optical perceptions are easily misleading, or not. Residents of California denounced a wave of robberies last year that were characterized by destructive violence in these actions.
There was no shortage of witnesses, among these owners of the assaulted residences, who assured, to the general surprise, that the perpetrators of these raids were bears or resembled bears.
Could they be thieves trying to mask their personality?
Due to the type of trail and the study of the security recordings, the investigators concluded that the perpetrators were unusual suspects: bears, real plantigrades.
More questions, one or more? That was the point, although this resulted in a generic name: "Hank the tank."
The investigations have received a strong boost recently. The Californian authorities have "arrested" four alleged assailants of residences in the surroundings of South Lake Tahoe, a tourist city in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where ski slopes and beaches are combined.
The alleged perpetrators are a mother and three cubs. Genetic tests confirmed that a large female black bear and her trio of smaller accomplices were responsible for the damage caused to at least 21 homes since 2022. This was explained by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife in an official note, text that delves into the popular culture aroused by the matter by citing the name given to the animal. It is also noted that there are still more involved.
"This large black bear is one of those identified by citizens as Hank the tank based on visual observations," this statement emphasizes. The four involved were "safely immobilized" last Friday, according to that document.
The mother, who the experts called 64F, already has permission to be taken to a sanctuary in the state of Colorado, near Springfield.
His three descendants will be transferred to a rehabilitation center in the Californian county of Sonoma. The authorities express "the hope that they stop having that negative behavior that they learned from the adult female and can return to the wild," she clarifies.
64F, who had been watched since 2022, was fitted with a monitoring device at the beginning of 2023, a microchip similar to the one that is put on dogs. They immobilized her when they caught him hanging around one of the residences. She was already accompanied by her three male descendants. From then on they monitored him via satellite.
So he was one of three adult bears who were identified as suspected perpetrators of more than 150 property damage incidents in the Lake District, a territory that stretches from northern California to Nevada. When this wave of raids was detected, experts considered that there was only one large bear involved. Then it was specified that there was a minimum of three. They observed that there were cases that overlapped and between which there was too much distance for just one of these plantigrades to commit them all.
However, the Californian department, through DNA analysis, has already determined that this female, always escorted by her puppies, starred in about twenty of these attacks, in which some of the owners were scared almost to death at the sight of the attacker size.
The case is not closed. Other invasive bears are being sought. As the police always repeat, the investigation is still open.
