A zoo in China is under scrutiny after allegedly painting two dogs black and orange to look like tigers.
Video footage shared on the ByteDance-owned app Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, shows Chow Chows enclosed in wooden pens and painted bright orange with black stripes.
Apart from the colour, the dogs at the Qinhu Bay Forest Animal Kingdom look nothing like tigers and viewers online were not so easily deceived.
“Isn’t that just a dog?” one person commented.
“They definitely don’t dare to bathe their dogs for fear of discolouration,” someone else wrote.
“A big tiger with a dog-like temper!” another said.
The zoo, located in Taizhou, later confessed to local media outlets that the animals were dyed as “a gimmick,” but assured that there were no health risks to the dogs.
“It was a native Chow Chow dyed into a ‘tiger dog’, not a tiger,” the zoo explained, per The Mirror.
Last year, the same zoo reportedly dyed dogs’ fur to mimic that of pandas, even shaping their fluff to look like the bamboo-eating bears.
When asked why, the zoo responded, “There are no panda bears at the zoo and we wanted to do this as a result.”
While they faced backlash, the representative explained that “people also dye their hair,” adding that “natural dye can be used on dogs if they have long fur.”
The Shanwei Zoo, also located in China, painted dogs to look like pandas as well last year, prompting visitors to demand refunds.
Watch the video below.
On January 24, 2025, at the “Qinhu Bay Forest Animal Kingdom” in Taizhou, Jiangsu Province, China, the park promoted itself on a Douyin livestream, claiming: “Our tigers are huge and very fierce!” pic.twitter.com/LFoGUm0fWc
— ( ͡ ͡° ͜ ʖ ͡ ͡°) (@eseLSMN) January 27, 2025