‘They get an E for effort’: Chinese zoo comes clean after scheme to paint dogs to look like pandas blows up in their faces when they start barking

Zoos in China seem eager to convince the public to come and visit, especially to see pandas, a culturally important and popular animal in the country. There is just one problem, though. They don’t actually have any.

A Chinese zoo has been exposed trying to pass off dyed chow chows, a breed of dog, as pandas. The giveaway? Pandas don’t bark.

The Shanwei Zoo was forced to admit the less-than-subtle subterfuge when visitors took a video that spread all over the internet, including TikTok, leading to widespread condemnation within the country. An initial attempt to imply the animals were some kind of “panda dog,” which I can only assume is some an unholy union between dog and bear, fell on deaf ears, and the zoo owned up to their fiendish plot.

This is, oddly, the second zoo in China to be caught trying to perpetrate this exact same ruse, as Taizhou Zoo was caught doing the exact same thing in May of this year. According to officials from Shanwei zoo, they did it for a very simple reason: they had no actual pandas. When questioned about any harm that might have come to the dogs from the process, they didn’t seem worried. “Normal people dye their hair,” a representative told Qilu Evening News. “Dogs can dye their hair, too.”

Fake animals have been quite a problem for zoos in China. Back in 2021, Xiangwushan Zoo in Xianning, Hubei province, attempted to pass off a dog as a wolf. The dog was actually used to replace a wolf after the wolf had died of old age. That attempt was pretty poor as they opted to use a Rottweiler instead of anything that looked at all like a wolf.

It is not just an issue exclusive to China, as the International Garden Municipal Park in Cairo, Egypt, was accused of painting a donkey to look like a zebra in 2018. That plan seemed to fall apart when the paint became smudged.

Zoos using fake animals actually go back much further than that. When they were primarily known as menageries and were much smaller, really just a way to keep animals captive in cages as a means of entertainment and stature for the rich families that owned them, many would try to pass off fake animals to get one over on each other. With little known about many wild animals at the time, they must have felt it would be easy enough to convince someone that one animal painted a different color was something else.

However, for zoo officials in China, this seems to be a repeat offense and could be due to the considerable importance of pandas in the country. The giant panda is a national symbol in China, not just as a symbol of the country but also as an important element of Chinese folklore and culture. The efforts being made throughout the country to preserve the panda population is also seen as a very important pursuit, and failure to source pandas and add to these efforts could be something that the zoo officials are concerned about.

The Chinese government has even used pandas as a form of diplomacy, gifting or loaning them to zoos all around the world, a tradition that goes back as far as the Tang Dynasty.

I doubt the countries receiving the pandas would be as impressed if a couple of dyed in the wool panda pooches arrived instead.