TWO Chinese tourists in Japan have drawn flak online after photos of them catching swans with their bare hands at Lake Yamanaka went viral, reported China Press.
In the photos, one of the women was seen cradling a swan while the other held another bird by the neck and lifted it into the air to pose for the camera.
The photos drew widespread criticism online as wild swans are protected by law in Japan.
“Isn’t this animal abuse,” one netizen wrote.
Others urged Japanese authorities to take action against them and revoke their tourist visa.
The original social media user who posted the photo later took it down and shut down her account.
A person believed to be one of the women in the photos later released a statement, claiming the photos were AI-generated and that no harm had been done to the birds.
It was reported that Chinese tourists have previously been involved in incidents involving the inappropriate treatment of deer in Nara, including feeding them rubbish.
> Hallucinating from mushrooms, a survival training instructor in China’s Liaoning province, mistook his pet dog as his former girlfriend and kissed the animal for seven hours straight, reported Guangming Daily.
Right after consuming the fungi, Zhang’s roommate saw him picking up his pet dog and kissing it repeatedly. As Zhang doted on the dog, the roommate initially thought nothing of it.
Several hours later, he found Zhang still holding the dog tightly and repeatedly kissing it. After recording the scene, he rushed Zhang to hospital.
Zhang later said he recalled seeing his former girlfriend standing in front of him, which caused memories of the past relationship to come flooding back.
Following treatment, a sheepish Zhang said all he wanted to do was to apologise to his dog.
(The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.)
