YEKATERINBURG, December 11 (RIA Novosti) - A pack of some 20 stray dogs has turned green after scavenging for food at an illegal dump on the outskirts of Russia's Urals city of Yekaterinburg, police said on Friday.

"Either local residents or a factory have been dumping some kind of chemical waste there," a police spokesman told RIA Novosti, adding that police had asked the local council to take steps to clear up the site.

One of the first people to see the green hounds, believed to be former guard dogs, was Alexei Bukharovsky, from the village of Shuvakish.

"I go past those dogs every day," he said. "They are usually reddish...but then I saw, running along the white snow, an almost completely emerald dog."

"At first I thought someone had been playing a joke," he went on.