Roughly 1,000 individuals gathered at Germany’s Berlin Potsdamer Platz railroad station, howling and barking in their interactions with each other.
Viral video of the bizarre meetup shows hundreds of people gathered, howling and barking. Many of them can be seen wearing dog-like masks and sitting upright on their knees, as seen in a video shared by the New York Post.
Commenters across social media did not mince words.
“How nice of mental institutions to allow patients outdoors every once in a while. A win for animal rights at the same time,” one individual wrote, as another made the plea to “call animal control.”
“This has to be a joke right? There’s no way people are doing this!” one exclaimed as another asked the deeper questions.
“If they do indeed identify as canines and only communicate in barking and howling how do they interact with non canines [sic] in a professional space or even any where [sic],” they asked.
“Can you say ‘mental illness’? Not the Germany I remember,” an X user remarked.
The video comes as concerns continue to rise as society accepts abnormal behaviors or mental illness as “normal,” whether that be males contending they are actually females or individuals identifying as “trans-species.”
In 2017, Breitbart News highlighted a cosplay merchandise seller from Argentina who spent tens of thousands of dollars to become a “trans-species elf.”
“I want to be an elf, an angel and a fantasy being, my aim is to look inhuman, ethereal, graceful and delicate,” Padron told The Daily Mail at the time.
“I have my own beauty ideal and want to achieve that no matter what… I want to have my ears cut to become pointy like an elve’s, my jaw to look more sharp like a diamond, a face-lift and an eye-lift to give my eyes a cat-like shape,” he added.
More recently, a Japanese man has gone viral for his realistic, $14,000 collie costume which he wears in public, posing as a dog. The man is only known as “Toco,” and he said the costume has helped fulfil his dream of “becoming an animal.”
One video posted to his YouTube channel roughly one month ago is titled, “I was interviewed as a person who became a dog!”
Earlier this year, Florida essentially barred children from the “furry convention” in Orlando, as the Protection of Children Act “imposes fines on establishments that allow children to attend sexually explicit adult shows, such as drag shows.”
“In many instances, furries have been associated with erotic behavior, likely leading to this decision by the organizers of the event,” as Breitbart News reported. It should be noted that “furries” are individuals who identify with anthropomorphic animals.
The lead image for this article was taken in New York City, not from the event in Berlin.