Chinese zoo bilks viewers by labelling dog as a lion

August 15, 2013 • 8:07 am

According to Business Insider (via Matthew Cobb),  a zoo in China pulled a fast one on customers:

A Chinese zoo’s supposed “African lion” was exposed as a fraud when the dog used as a substitute started barking.

The zoo in the People’s Park of Luohe, in the central province of Henan, replaced exotic exhibits with common species, according to the state-run Beijing Youth Daily.

It quoted a customer surnamed Liu who wanted to show her son the different sounds animals made — but he pointed out that the animal in the cage labelled “African lion” was barking.

The beast was in fact a Tibetan mastiff — a large and long-haired breed of dog.

“The zoo is absolutely cheating us,” the paper quoted Liu, who was charged 15 yuan ($2.45) for the ticket, as saying. “They are trying to disguise the dogs as lions.”

Three other species housed incorrectly included two coypu rodents in a snake’s cage, a white fox in a leopard’s den, and another dog in a wolf pen.

Here’s the photo from the article, though not the beast in question:

 china-dog-lion
This is not the first time a dog has been on exhibit in a zoo. One of my friends visited the Moscow zoo, and reported that it had a cage containing two domestic dogs.  But they were labelled as such, though Lord knows why.  I promptly dubbed them “Fidostoyevsky” and “Spottsky.”
But my question is this: how in tarnation can anyone think that this looks like a lion? Everyone knows what a lion looks like.
Also, it is grossly immoral to pretend that a d-g is actually a felid.

49 thoughts on “Chinese zoo bilks viewers by labelling dog as a lion”

  2. Smithsonian unearths a new species of carnivore: The olinguito
    From the Andes.
    They had one in a zoo:

    “The animal puzzled zookeepers because it oddly refused to breed or mingle with other olingos.

    “They thought it was just a fussy olingo, but turns out it was completely the wrong species,” said Smithsonian zoologist Kristofer M. Helgen, who spearheaded the sleuthing on the olinguito, which is Spanish for “little olingo.””

  4. Zoos in general have to do a lot to justify their existence these days anyway. I am not sure how I feel about them, particularly for larger animals like big cats – they seem a little cramped to say the least. There may be benefits in having a ‘reserve’ of genetic material…
    Perhaps it is better that they have a d-g rather than a real lion.

    You can fool some of the people some of the time…

    1. Based on the pictures and reports I’ve seen of Chinese zoos, there isn’t much of a case to be made about the animals being better off- too many of them (including the zoo in this story) seem to be dominated by small cages with bare concrete floors and only a single row of steel bars separating the animals from the tourists.

  5. Ha ha that is hilarious. I thought it was bad when there was fraudulent behaviour with products from China (reading some of the labels at Chinese grocery stores usually tells you that product ain’t the actual one) but a dog masquerading as a lion is just a bridge too far! I wonder if they knitted a mane for the dog and pasted on a lion tail.

    1. Hehe, I lol’ed. And I’m still astonished that some people couldn’t see the difference.

  8. “Everyone knows what a lion looks like.”

    You’d be surprised. A friend worked as an educator at the Staten Island zoo and dealt with school children on class trips. One youngster from the city assumed that the large pig in the petting zoo was an elephant.

    1. I agree – the ignorance of many people about the world around them is limitless. I used to work in the Camargue in France and on one occasion was amused to over-hear some tourists commenting about a few cattle egrets in a marsh: “look the flamingo is riding a horse!”.

    2. Yes. I have been interning at a zoo this summer, and spent spent probably 50 hours or so observing animals from the public’s perspective. The things I’ve heard people say, and ask, have broken my heart.

      As far as “Everyone knows what a lion looks like”, well, I’ve heard multiple people call our lions tigers. Or the lioness a tiger. Or our tigers lions. I’ve also heard at least one person assert that lions eat grass.

      1. I’ve also heard at least one person assert that lions eat grass.

        Animal Planet ought to be obligatory around the world.

        1. Except then you might be taught that mermaids are real, or animals can sense ghosts. David Attenborough, on the other hand….

          1. Hmm…the programming must be different from where I’m at. In spite of their touchy-feely shows, they are usually not afraid to show nature as it really is.

            I do agree with you on Mr. Attenborough though. He is a living legend.

      2. One of the worst things, education wise, my dad and I witnessed when I was about 10 or so at a zoo is when an employee was showing a snake and explaining how it wasn’t slimy but soft. He had a little boy touch the snake and the boy said how soft it was. The mother of the boy grabbed his arm and admonished him for touching the “dirty slimy snake”. Great, progress in educating youth undone in 2 seconds by an ignorant parent!

        1. I think what bugs me the most is the kids who ask a question, the parents don’t know, and rather than read one of the eleventy-million signs around the exhibit, they just make something up. ARGH.

          1. I have seen that done countless times! Admittedly as a bio-nerd I admit that sometimes the signage is wrong (i.e. simplified or out of date, or just amusingly off), but it’s a better starting point than whole-sale invention.

            And heck. . . if you are just going to make something up, at least make it really good! I want to over-hear some real doozies next time. 😉

      3. Well, technically, lions do eat grass. It’s just that they eat grass in the form of the proteins that the antelope (et al.) so thoughtfully turn the grass into….

        b&

      4. I once went on a singles hike here in the SF Bay area. We went past a farm that had a nanny goat with a very full udder laying down. One woman looked at the goat very carefully and asked “Is that a male?” I no sooner finished explaining that, no, the goat was female and that was an udder, when another woman walked up and exclaimed “Oh my god, is that a tumor?!” When I explained again that she was seeing an udder, she gestured to her breasts and said “I would have thought the udder would be up here.”

        Forget about wild animals–these people were failing Domestic Animals 101.

        I told this story to a uncle who was raised on a farm and I thought he was going to bust a gut laughing.

        1. Ha! Someone said the same thing to me about a picture of a goat in my goat calendar at work! They couldn’t understand that was a lady goat with udders.

        2. You missed a golden opportunity with the first one. You should have agreed that it was a male, and then sincerely noted that goats actually have multiple penises (while pointing at the nipples).

          b&

  9. Google “Charles the Monarch” (labradoodle with a lion cut)for a much more convincing dog-lion.

    1. I like it! I think I wish I had a similar outfit to annoy my dog with as she is that same colour!

  13. Every dog should have its day. Therefore, this one’s stint as lion came as no surprise.

  16. Well of course they werent really lions. If they had really been felids, the Chinese would have eaten them, right? Say, werent there lions in that zoo a few years ago? I wonder what happened to them?

    4. The Chinese do not eat cats, they do however eat dogs. They are considered to be especially beneficial against the winter cold. I don’t think it’s legal though.

  17. The Moscow exhibit of two dogs, a nonfraudulent display, was outdone some years ago by the Madrid zoo, which for a month exhibited a human being, He was a performance artist, who dressed as a bureaucrat and sat at a desk reading and signing and stamping official-looking paperwork (he did not stay overnight).

    He was labeled as the species that is the most dangerous animal in the world, which is exactly right.

  18. Look on the bright side, a lion has been saved from the no doubt crappy conditions in this zoo.

  19. I’ve seem quite a few guffawing comments on other websites about this story….. usually in the vein of “those silly people, haha…”

    Screw that. I would expect that a hell of a lot of ‘Muricans would fail to spot the obvious here, between a)general ignorance of biology, b)so many zoo-goers focused on watching their kids rather than animals, and c) confirmation bias–seeing what is expected.

Comments are closed.