TikTok: @haggiswildlifefoundation, Getty Images: Pichunter
TikTokers are taking an old joke online and pretending a Scottish delicacy is in fact a mythical creature that lives in the mountainside.
The search term wild haggis currently has 148 million views on TikTok, and leads to videos, many seemingly made by Scottish people, that give insights into a small, rodent-like animal that supposedly roams Scotland, including close-ups of a model at a museum, explanations of their anatomy and where they live in the mountains, and footage of locals attempting to catch one for dinner.
The problem is, the creature doesn't really exist.
Haggis is in fact a type of sausage made from a sheep or cow's liver, stomach or heart mixed with onion, oatmeal, and suet. Traditional haggis is banned in the US as an original recipe contains sheep lungs which were made illegal to import in 1971; this may have sparked additional mystery around the item, leading to an old tradition of tricking American tourists into thinking haggis is an animal, which is an old joke in Scotland, according to The Scotsman.
According to a 2003 online survey of 1,000 US visitors to Scotland, conducted by haggis manufacturer Hall's of Broxburn, not only did 33% of visitors believe it was an animal, 23% believed they could catch one, The Guardian reported at the time.
Since a TikTok account titled Haggis Wildlife Foundation popped up four days ago, they've received over 1.4 million views across 18 videos.
Their uploads involve a detailed history of the fictional creature and various old-looking images they claim are of the creature which includes the hashtag #americans in the caption. They also made an urgent appeal for donations of a half shilling, an obsolete British coin equivalent to around $0.14, to help protect the "wild haggis."
Their most popular video, which received over 643,000 views, shows an old-fashioned photo of a man posing with an animal they claim is a haggis.
The upload received over 1,300 comments, many of which, in keeping with similar videos, continued the illusion and claimed they had personally seen the animal, knew family members who used to breed them, or had worked with conservation efforts to introduce more into the wild, and the commitment to the joke appears to be paying off, as viewers appear to take it seriously.
"I'm confused I thought haggis was sheep's stomach or something like that," one viewer wrote in a comment that received over 630 likes.
"Omg I actually thought this was real… you almost got me," another comment read.
"God forgive me but I have always been brought up thinking wild haggis to be a myth but this has got me thinking are they real or no...?" a further viewer questioned beneath a video that claimed to show a photo of the last pair of domesticated haggis.
Comments beneath similar videos from other accounts range from viewers who seem totally confused about whether the creature is real, to those who are clearly in on the joke and are fully aware that no such wild haggis exists and it is in fact a traditional Scottish dish.
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