A zoo in the Chinese province of Henan had a plan. It was rubbish, and they got rumbled.
Thanks to a frankly brilliant story in the state run newspaper Beijing Youth Daily, reported on
Yahoo, we now know that one zoo’s attempt to fool its customers has been hilariously exposed.
A mother called Liu and her son were wandering around the zoo in the People's Park of Luohe and they decided to check out the king of the jungle, the mighty African lion.
However, when the mother and child got to the enclosure, something wasn’t right. The lion was barking.
"The zoo is absolutely cheating us," Liu tells the paper. "They are trying to disguise the dogs as lions."
The ‘lion’ was in fact a Tibetan Mastiff, a big dog that looks a little like a lion, from a distance at least. So long as it doesn’t bark.
The chief of the park's animal department, Liu Suya, told the paper that they did have a lion but it was gone to take part in a breeding program and the dog was an employee’s pet who was put in there for safety reasons. Sounds legit.
The zoo also had some other problems, like a dog in a wolf’s cage and a white fox which was in an enclosure marked as a leopard’s den.
Anyway, if you are heading out that way, maybe give the place a miss, even if the entrance fee is less than €2.
