SCOTS ARE TRICKING TOURISTS INTO THINKING WILD HAGGIS IS REAL
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Haggis is surely Scotland's most iconic dish.
And with Burns Night finally here, millions of Scots will be tucking into the savoury pudding – made of sheep's offal, oatmeal and and spices – along with neeps (turnips) and tatties (potatoes).
But across the Atlantic, where haggis has been banned for more than 50 years, many Americans are struggling to understand what the delicacy actually is.
Now, cheeky Scots are tricking tourists into thinking the haggis is a real creature –caught and skinned before ending up on Burns Night dinner plate.
One Scottish TikTok user posted a clip of herself visiting Glasgow's Kelvingrove Museum, where a wild haggis model is on display.
She says: 'Here's what a wild haggis looks like! It's totally real!! It's in a museum and everything.'
One user replied: 'Am I the only one who just learned about a completely new animal', while another said: 'i can't tell if this is legit or not.'
Meanwhile, hilarious AI-generated imagery posted by the 'Haggis Wildlife Foundation' also presents the 'wild haggis' native to the Scottish Highlands as a real species.
TikTok clips seemingly narrated by David Attenborough explain: 'Deep in the rugged forests of Scotland, an extraordinary diversity of wild haggis thrives.'
The Foundation adds: 'If you're lucky enough to visit Scotland, keep your eyes peeled for these elusive creatures during your hikes or nature walks.'
Like something between a hedgehog and a guinea pig, the cute little mammal scuttles through the heather over hills and steep mountains of Scotland, clips show.
TikTok's predominantly Gen-Z userbase is falling for the elaborate hoax, with one saying: 'I didn't even know that these animals existed.'
Another TikTok user posted: 'what happens on burns night, do they hide? poor things', while yet another said: 'I cant tell of its ai or not.'
Someone else said: 'this is ai, right? i'm so confused.'
Of course, the wild haggis – or 'Haggis scoticus' to give it its supposed Latin name – is a traditional Scottish hoax.
Origins of the myth are unclear, but it playfully capitalizes on a lack of knowledge globally about what haggis actually is, especially in the US, where it has been banned since 1971 due to the inclusion of sheep's lung.
According to a 2003 survey, one-third of US visitors to Scotland believed the wild haggis to be a real creature.
On its glossy website, Haggis Wildlife Foundation claims to have been founded in 1892 – although the site and social media accounts only seem to go back to September 2023.
It is filled with AI-generated images of wild haggis specimens and fictional staff who work at the Foundation, including 'Professor McDougal MacDougal' and 'Dr Ewan McHabitat'.
According to the video clips, wild haggis comprises several different subspecies each 'uniquely adapted to its local environment', including the 'woolly haggis' and the 'wild male mullet haggis'.
There's also the 'Irn-Bru' haggis, described as 'a diminutive and orange-hued variant' that mostly consumes 'fruit from the Irn-Bru tree', in reference to Scotland's famous soft drink.
According to legend, the wild haggis's left and right legs are of different lengths allowing it to run quickly on steep mountains and hillsides, but only in one direction.
Others say there are two varieties of haggis – one with longer left legs that can only run clockwise and one with longer right legs that can only run anticlockwise.
Meanwhile, the species native to Scotland's flatter terrain has evolved legs of equal size – a 'crucial adaptation', the Foundation says.
Haggis Wildlife Foundation does admit the animal 'may not exist in the physical sense', but 'certainly exists in the hearts and imaginations of the Scottish people'.
'Wild haggis exists in a unique phenomenological space where the distinction between 'real' and 'not real' becomes meaningless,' it says.
Wild haggis was the subject of a viral post on Reddit two years ago when one user posted an image of the beast with the question: 'are haggis real?!! I NEED TO KNOW.'
One person replied, 'Yes, though very hard to find in the wild', while another said 'they are slowly creeping up the endangered species list'.
A third replied: 'Yes, traditionally people keep them as animals and raise them, usually from birth, until Burns Day where people will put down their pet haggis.'
Someone else posted: 'Aye, but due to global warming they're a lot less common these days.'
Dr Jason Gilchrist, an ecologist and lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University, said he will be eating vegan haggis with his neeps and tatties this Burns Night.
Regarding the wild haggis, he told MailOnline: 'Weel, ah hae heard o' it, bit despite kin hoors spent drookit up th' bonnie hills o' Scotland, ah've ne'er set sicht oan yon seendle elusive beastie.'
MailOnline used AI to translate to English: 'Well, I have heard of it, but despite many hours spent soaked on the beautiful hills of Scotland, I have never seen that small elusive creature.'
The offal truth: Haggis has its historical roots in ENGLAND, Scottish expert claims
It's Scotland's national dish, famously immortalized by legendary poet Robert Burns as 'great chieftain o' the pudding-race' in 1786.
But the origin of haggis – made of offal, oats and spices and famously served with 'neeps' (turnips) and 'tatties' (potatoes) – appears to be English.
Scottish writer and University of Oxford graduate Emma Irving confidentially describes it as an English invention.
'What many people don't know is that Scotland's national dish was invented by their auldest of enemies: the English,' said Irving in an article for The Economist.
The first recorded recipes using the name 'hagws' or 'hagese' come from English cookbooks in the 15th century.
No mention of haggis appears in any 'identifiably Scottish text' until 1513, when it briefly appears in a verse by William Dunbar, a Scottish poet and priest at the court of James IV.
But this is nearly 100 years after the earliest recording of a haggis recipe, in an English cookery book called 'Liber Cure Cocorum' dating from around the year 1430 and originating in Lancashire.
Irving said haggis only became linked with Scotland after the Highland Clearances between 1750 and 1860, when many tenant farmers were evicted to make way for sheep.
She told BBC Radio 4: 'Haggis, because it was so economical and also nutritious...became really popular north of the border.'
She said the stereotype of a poor peasant eating offal 'was used to put successful Scottish people in their place'.
She added: 'Burns saw this slight and he turned it into an accolade.
'He saw the poetry in haggis, for him it became an emblem of Scottish character, sort of resourceful and hearty and unassuming and you know everything that the decadent English weren't.'
According to Professor Rebecca Earle, a food historian at the University of Warwick, historical versions of haggis may have existed in England and Scotland in different forms.
'Lots of cultures have versions of a sausage-like thing comprising meat offcuts and some sort of grain,' she told MailOnline.
'The specificities of that combination of grain and meat – oats, rice, wheat, lambs' lungs, pig's blood – is what makes each dish distinctive, but all are part of a broader category of food shared by many people.'
