Alternative title for this one: “Lions and tigers and… wait, what?” — Dan

Zoos are typically fun and educational experiences. Visitors get to see animals that they would never get to see otherwise — there are no penguins native to New York, alligators living in the wild in Madrid, or pandas living outside of zoos anywhere but China. With zoos, seeing all of these creatures — and more — is possible, all for the cost of one ticket. But that said, zoos do come with the risk of disappointment. The penguin exhibit may be closed. The alligators may not come out of their habitat when you visit. The panda may be asleep.

And the lion may be lying.

No, not lying around. Lying — about being a lion. Let’s start with a picture, via ABC News.

In the summer of 2013, visitors to the zoo at the People’s Park of Luohe, China, forked over about $2.50 for tickets to see all sorts of animals, including the lion pictured above. The fact that the animal doesn’t look very lion-like was a clue, but not a dispositive one, I guess, because people were mostly happy with the experience — maybe they didn’t know what lions are supposed to look like. But in August of that year, the “lion” did something that lions aren’t supposed to do. It opened its mouth and, instead of giving the regal, bellowing roar one typically associates with lions, this one instead barked — like a dog. As the BBC reported, “a woman identified by the surname Liu [ . . . ] had been teaching her son to identify animals by the sounds they make,” and was convinced that she — and the other patrons — had been the victims of zoological fraud.

She was right. That’s a long-haired Tibetan mastiff, which, to be clear, is a breed of dog, not a type of lion.

The zoo explained that it wasn’t trying to trick anyone. Per the CBC, the zoo’s “animal department chief tried to explain [ . . . ] that the zoo did have a lion, but it had been sent to a breeding facility,” and they simply left the cage empty — at least, at first. Then, one day, an employee showed up to work with a pet dog, and “zoo authorities decided to use it to temporarily house” the pet for safety reasons, figuring no one would care.

But that story seemed about as credible as the “lion” itself. Further inspection of other zoo animal habitats revealed other “temporary” replacements — “two coypu rodents in a snake's cage, a white fox in a leopard's den, and yet another dog in a wolf's pen,” according to ABC News. The zoo claimed that those animals were also missing because they’d been sent to parts unknown for reasons unknown but — pinky promise — would be back soon.

That turned out to be untrue, of course, but for very good reason: due to the scandal, the zoo shut down entirely before the month was out.

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Today’s Bonus fact: Let’s — again! — start with a picture.

In the summer of 2023, another Chinese zoo was similarly accused of a bait-and-switch. As reported by CBS News, visitors to a zoo near Hangzhou were convinced that a sun bear above was actually a person in a bear costume. They were probably wrong. The zoo immediately denied the allegations, and the New York Times talked to Charles Robbins, the director of research at the Washington State University Bear Center, who agreed that the bear is truly a bear. Robbins said that the bear above “looks like a sun bear to me” and that “presumably, the bear has been rewarded with food by the crowd for standing, so it learned very quickly to do just that.”

From the Archives: Gorilla Goggles: Why do visitors to this zoo have to wear funny paper glasses?

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And thanks! — Dan