For a large part of my adult life I was a circus sideshow performer (I still do it a time or two a year). Besides the show we, also, had a few tables set up with gaffed creatures that we would call real. It always amused me how people would believe these things that they saw as real. We had things like "chupacabra, furry fish, jackelope, tiny elephant, mermaid, fossilized fairy" and other things that I am just blanking on. This thing reminds me a lot of some of those bogus things we had