Jimmy Kimmel Explains the Elaborate Steps He Took to Prank the World in that Olympic Wolf Video Everyone's Talking About

Jimmy Kimmel -- once again -- had to explain how he tricked the world.

On Thursday, Olympic luge athlete Kate Hansen tweeted a video of what appeared to be a wolf wandering in her Sochi hallway. The footage wasn't too much of a long shot given the criticism of the conditions in the 2014 Winter Games' host city.

Image source: YouTube

It was speculated that the video could be a hoax or that the wolf was actually a Siberian Husky, but after letting the footage marinate and make its rounds on the Internet, Kimmel came clean.

On his late night show, Kimmel explained that it wasn't a Russian wolf, but an American wolf.

"I know this because the wolf is backstage right now," Kimmel said.

"Rugby" was hired to wander a set staged to look like the dorm hallway of U.S. Olympic luge athlete Kate Hansen. (Image source: YouTube)

"We shot the video and Kate Hansen posted it to her account and a media frenzy was born," he continued, seeming pleased with his trick.

Hansen, who is a member of the U.S. team, called into Kimmel's show via Skype.

She admitted "there was a little more backlash" to her involvement in the trick than she thought there would be, "but, you know, it was all worth it in the end." Hansen noted that security "started freaking out" a bit over the video, seeing it as a "breach of athletes' safety."

Kimmel advised her to point the Olympic Committee to the Constitution if she got in trouble for exercising her "freedom of expression."

The late night host revealed that his team tried to be as authentic as possible in the video, replicating the look of Hansen's hallway in the Olympic Village in the show's Los Angeles studio.

It took Kimmel's team 15 hours to make the facade of Hansen's Olympic Village hallway. (Image source: YouTube)

"This is how stupid our job is," he said. "Our art department, it took them 15 hours to construct an exact replica of Kate's dorm and we hired a wolf also."

Watch the segment with Kimmel's explanation:

If you're wondering, the animal named Rugby is 80 to 90 percent wolf, according to its handler.

This isn't the first time Kimmel was behind a viral video prank. Last year, he admitted to orchestrating the viral "epic twerking fail" video.