Now it’s time for everyone’s favorite game show: what kind of animal is this?
That’s what residents of Shawnee Heights in northeast Kansas are playing after a photo went viral of an unidentified creature.
As WIBW reports, the picture’s photographer first consulted Google and was told they’d snapped a black bear. However, local wildlife experts dispute that thesis.
Tracey Henderson, northern carnivore keeper of the Topeka Zoo, tells WIBW there’s “absolutely zero” chance that the animal in the photo is a bear.
“I’m leaning more towards coyote,” Henderson says. “I could see more understandably by the Colorado border, but I would say absolutely not.”
“Black bears, for example, will be significantly larger,” adds the zoo’s conservation director, Dennis Dinwiddie. “Even the cubs would be significantly larger than that photograph. They can be up to several hundred pounds.”
Meanwhile, Kansas Wildlife and Parks wildlife biologist Matt Peek declared, “This is a raccoon.”
We were gonna guess that it’s Toto, but, of course, he isn’t in Kansas anymore.