Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Says He Once Dumped Dead Bear in Central Park As Joke

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s copping to a viral mystery that once had New Yorkers baffled ... admitting he dumped a dead bear carcass into Central Park and tossed a bike on top of it as a joke.

The independent candidate for president posted a video to his official X account Sunday describing the incident seemingly to get ahead of a story soon to be published by The New Yorker.

In the bizarre video, RFK Jr. is sitting in a dining room explaining he once went to Goshen, New York on a falconing trip and while driving there he claims a woman in front of him hit and killed a bear cub.

Kennedy, not one to waste good bear meat, says he grabbed the cub and tossed it in his car -- an action he says is allowed under New York state law.

After a day of falconing, which went later than expected, Kennedy says he drove to dinner in NYC with friends instead of heading home to Westchester to refrigerate the bear.

The dinner also went long ... and RFK Jr. had a flight to catch -- but, he didn't want to leave the bear inside his car.

Instead of calling someone to come pick up the car with the bear in it, he and his dinner companions thought it would be funny to take the bear and put it in Central Park with an old bicycle on top of it.

At the time, RFK Jr. explained, a series of pedestrians had been hit and killed by bicyclists in the park ... and he and his -- admittedly drunken -- companions thought whoever found the bear would find it amusing.

Of course, they didn't -- and, authorities, including the NYPD's Animal Cruelty Investigation Squad, rushed to Central Park to investigate ... ultimately though the investigation lost steam, and Kennedy says no one ever contacted him until the New Yorker researchers put two and two together.

Worth noting ... Kennedy's reaction during this video's pretty nonchalant -- even though many online are utterly shocked by this saga.