By: Sandy Wang

Last Thursday, a lioness was supposedly seen near the outskirts of Berlin. However, officials now suspect that the “lioness” might actually be a wild boar.

The hunt for the lioness began when two men recorded an unfocused video of what they thought was a lion chasing a wild boar at around midnight.

Around 100 police officers were sent fully equipped to search for the lioness. They upended many of the communities in Germany, and went straight into heavily wooded towns.

That night, several people told the police that they had heard roars coming from the forest. As it turned out, the roars were the cause of some teenagers playing them from a speaker.

“The atmosphere was quite tense,” Uda Bastians, a resident, said when interviewed. “There weren’t many people in the street, and the people you met, everyone was a bit afraid.”

On the second day of the search, a resident reported that they had seen the lioness, but after thirty officers scoured the area, they only found a family of wild boars. Officials decided to call off the search after that.

“A wild boar doesn’t really look like a lion, and we have a lot of wild boars,” Ms. Bastians said, surprised. “Everyone has seen wild boars, and we all know lions from boars.”

Just to confirm that the “lioness” really was just a wild boar, an official asked Heriberto Hofer, the director of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, to analyze the video.

Dr. Hofer said that some of the characteristics of a wild boar were similar to a lion, but a few details, like the tail length and a young boar running through, determined that the animal in the video was a wild boar.

“I can see some of the reasons for confusion,” he said.

Wild boars have quite a history with Berliners. So much so that residents who feed them are threatened to get punished by housing associations.

Wild boars are often seen snuffling through the belongings of bathers at a popular swimming lake. Once, a wild boar even appeared at a kid’s outdoor birthday party and grabbed a piece of cake.

Link to article: How the Hunt for a Lioness Near Berlin Turned Into a Wild Boar Chase