Beware next time you visit a zoo: that giant panda may be your neighbour’s dog

We live in a fake century.
Fake news. Fake art. Fake heiresses. Fake teeth. Fake crab. Fake eyelashes. Fake diamonds. Fake nails. Fake quotes. Fake celebrity endorsements. Fake grass. Fake tattoos. Fake polls.
And now … fake pandas?
Per a New York Post story this week: “Chinese Zoo Admits Its ‘Pandas’ Are Just Painted Dogs.” It seems visitors to the Shanwei Zoo grew suspicious when one of the pandas barked. That would be startling. The poor thing was probably trying to say: Someone hose me down! Every time I lick myself, I get a real bad taste of Benjamin Moore!
Sadly, this is not the first time a Chinese zoo has turned a chow chow into a panda panda. In May, after the Taizhou Zoo was unable to secure real pandas, it opted for a hybrid exhibit: “Panda Dogs.”
Fun. It was like animal Halloween.
I don’t like zoos. And I’ve been to enough of them in various countries to get the sense that animals also do not like zoos. Monkeys shrieking with boredom. Leopards pacing aimlessly. Aviaries the size of a studio apartment. Rhinos sprawled on their anti-Ozempic sides, displaying the learned helplessness of an overnight worker in a pillow factory.
It makes me sad. My wife says I am wrong. I am anthropomorphizing. I am discounting the value of zoos in species conservation, especially as natural habitats are encroached and battered by climate change. An endangered animal is safer in a zoo than in the wild.
All of this may be true for reputable institutions with resources, top-notch care and expertise. I’m certain the Toronto Zoo will never glue a bill, paddle-tail and webbed feet to a mongoose and then call it a platypus. Visitors know the ring-tailed lemur isn’t a Norwegian Forest cat with orange contact lenses.
But a majority of “zoos” on this planet are cash-strapped, understaffed, stinky prisons where four-legged inmates are lucky to get a decent meal or clean enclosure. Then they sit there as yahoos leer all day long.
It is these ramshackle parks that are tempted to pass off counterfeit animals.
A few years ago, the South China Morning Post published a roundup of dubious creatures. This included a zoo in Egypt that, with spray-paint, turned a donkey into a zebra. Another zoo in China expanded its wolf exhibit by drafting a Siberian husky.
At yet another venue — how many zoos are there in China? — a Tibetan mastiff cosplayed as an African lion. Also in China, visitors to one zoo who lined up to see penguins were greeted by a pool filled with inflatable birds. The ruse was foiled when one penguin deflated and terrified the kids.
That deception seems banal compared to a past controversy at China’s Hangzhou Zoo. As USA Today reported earlier this year, the zoo faced “rumours that some of its bears were human impostors.” A video circulated showing a Malayan sun bear suddenly stand on its hind legs and walk around like it was going for a smoke, which it probably was.
Officials denied any wrongdoing. They also made the situation worse by releasing a statement from the bear: “Let me emphasize again: I am a sun bear! Not a black bear! Not a dog! It’s a sun bear!” Yeah, or a human named Sun Bear.
You know how we have restaurant inspectors? We need zoo inspectors. An international cabal of undercover agents who gauge authenticity. The agent walks around from cage to cage with an iPad, cross-referencing what he sees with actual photos of the species.
Yup, that’s a polar bear. Bearded dragon. Check. That’s a Nicobar pigeon — or a regular pigeon that’s really into the Grateful Dead. Either way, pigeon. Hang on. Why do those bulge marks in the neck look suspiciously like imprints of human knees and feet? My God, that’s 12 dudes standing on each other’s shoulders in a giraffe costume!
There is a time and place for fake animals. I took the family to see Mirvish’s “Life of Pi” this month. It is a mesmerizing production with great storytelling and dazzling puppetry. After a while, I didn’t even notice the stagehands and puppeteers bringing the Bengal tiger to life.
Richard Parker, that talking tiger, was real to me.
Fake animals on a theatrical stage? Bravo! Fake animals in a zoo? Boo!
The barking pandas in the news this week were weak imitations. The fur parts that should have been snow-white were yellowish, like the panda had jaundice from bad bamboo. It makes no sense. Isn’t China home to the giant pandas? Don’t zoos around the world beg to borrow a panda for a limited time, like the animal is off to do a concert residency in Vegas?
Fake pandas in China? That’s like fake lobsters in Nova Scotia.
We are besieged with deception in the human world.
The animal world should be immune to our trickery.