An Australian woman was left surprised after spotting a mysterious animal in Dubai – describing it as something resembling a cross between a bunny, a deer and a dog. Louise Starkey captured a video of a pack of the large animals roaming wild in Dubai and shared it on Instagram, where it has gone viral with 1.3 million views in one day.
Mystery animal in Dubai
The video, which appears to have been filmed from a moving car, shows three animals that look like oversized rabbits sitting on a patch of grass.
“What the hell is that? God, is that a bunny?” a voice off-camera was heard asking.
Starkey told HT.com that the video was filmed near Crescent Moon Lake in Dubai. “I spotted them just outside of Crescent Moon Lake when I was on my way to a barbecue there. It’s a popular desert location where a lot of people go ,” she explained.
{{/usCountry}}Starkey told HT.com that the video was filmed near Crescent Moon Lake in Dubai. “I spotted them just outside of Crescent Moon Lake when I was on my way to a barbecue there. It’s a popular desert location where a lot of people go ,” she explained.
{{/usCountry}}“What in the Harry Potter concoction is this? Is this a bunny deer dog?” she captioned her Instagram video. Starkey, originally from Sydney, Australia, has been living in Dubai for the last two years.
Instagram solves mystery
After the video was posted online, several Instagram users identified the mystery animal as the Patagonian Mara.
“It is a Mara. The Al Marmoom Desert Conservation Reserve is home to approximately 200 maras, believed to have originated from abandoned pets,” one user commented.
“They are called a Patagonian mara- and I legit had the exact same reaction when I saw these little bundles of wizardry cuteness sitting in the middle of the roundabout out near Al Qudra,” another said.
“It’s not a bunny. This is a Patagonian mara — a large wild rodent originally from Argentina,” one commenter explained. “They look like a mix between a rabbit and a small deer. They’re harmless herbivores and people started seeing them near Al Qudra lakes since 2020 , but they’re wild, so best admired from a distance.”
According to a 2024 report in The Independent, a number of maras can be spotted on the grounds of Al Qudra Lakes. It is not clear how the animals, native to Argentina, ended up in Dubai — but the widely-accepted theory is that their population grew from abandoned pets.
“This large rodent is a common species in zoological collections and undoubtedly found its way out from captivity," wrote Jacky Judas in his book ‘A Natural History of the Emirates’.