For two days, Berlin held its breath: security forces were looking in the south of the capital for an alleged lioness who was supposed to be roaming through the woods. The XXL operation was triggered by a video snippet that made the rounds on the internet. On it you can see: a large animal that moves along the edge of the forest. The short clip was filmed by a 19-year-old from Kleinmachnow. In an interview he now commented on the resolution of the spectacle. And one thing is certain: the animal was not a wild boar!
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Lion in Berlin: wasn’t the animal a wild boar?
The search ended on Friday after a day and a half – after the investigators had followed all the clues and still hadn’t discovered a lioness, the responsible authorities broke up the spectacle. It was very likely a wild boar, it said. Experts wanted to have determined this, among other things, from the posture of the animal. Berlin breathed a sigh of relief: Isn’t there a lioness roaming the woods?
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But now Nico M., the 19-year-old from Kleinmachnow, who created the film snippet, expresses himself. He had filmed the animal and was the only one there when the animal appeared at the edge of the forest. “I can’t imagine that,” he said about the wild boar resolution to t-online. The animal does not look like a pig to him – and he is suspicious that the police also spoke of a big cat at times.
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This is how the video was created that triggered the search for the lion in Berlin
He already made the video on Wednesday evening. He saw animals on the side of the road, held the camera on it. “I only made the video because I saw wild boar,” he says. He sent the video to a group of friends via Snapchat – and a discussion about the animal broke out here. It quickly became clear that it could not be a wild boar. But: A lion was also unimaginable.
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The friends alerted the police. On Thursday, the video snippet ended up on Twitter, where it spread rapidly – with the campaign, the friends wanted to warn local residents about the supposed lioness. What exactly the video shows is still unclear. The fact is: Nico M. does not believe in a wild boar. Nevertheless, he understands that the search was stopped and the situation was resolved. “It’s understandable,” he says. “One would like to have peace in the city again at some point and let the police do their normal jobs.”
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Is the lion of Berlin a wild boar? Experts have doubts
Other experts also doubt that it really was a wild boar. “If you classify the video as real, like the authorities, you can see that the animal in it has a short, round head and round ears – like the head of a big cat,” said Potsdam veterinarian Michaela Ebeling of the Märkische Allgemeine. “Boars have a long head with short, pointed ears. That would be a very mutated wild boar.” According to Ebeling, clarity will only come in the next few days. The results of the analysis of fecal and hair samples will not be available until Monday.
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