The poor dogs were filmed inside an enclosure at the Qinhu Bay Forest Animal Kingdom in China – a zoo that is said to have previously coloured dogs to look like pandas
China: Dogs painted as ‘tigers’ at a Chinese Zoo
An Chinese zoo that was caught painting dogs to look like pandas has sparked outrage yet again – this time for painting them bright orange to resemble tigers.
The poor dogs were filmed inside an enclosure at the Qinhu Bay Forest Animal Kingdom – a zoo in Jiangyan district, Taizhou, in East China’s Jiangsu province. It comes just four months after a seperate Chinese zoo went viral for painting black splodges on their dogs to convince visitors they were pandas, something this zoo apparently did too.
But the new “tigers” are fooling no one, and the zoo has been mercilessly mocked online after a live stream showed the coloured Chow Chows, a breed originally from Northern China, wagging their tails and running around their pens.
The dogs, which appear to be painted or dyed with an orange and black stripes, sparked fury online with images also shared on Douyin, which is what TikTok is called in China, on January 24.
Social media users were not duped. One said: “Isn’t that just a dog?” Another shared a picture of their cat, jokingly captioning it: “My black Bengal tiger.” One user speculated: “They definitely don’t dare to bathe their dogs for fear of discolouration.” And another joked: “A big tiger with a dog-like temper!”
The zoo reportedly began operating in August 2024 and is said to cover 600 acres. It reportedly coloured Chow Chow dogs to look like pandas previously, much like a park in Guangdong that allows visitors to see “rare and exotic animals”.
The Guangdong zoo had initially claimed it had not misled people as it did not claim the animals were pandas, explaining instead that they were, in reality, “panda dogs”. However, when quizzed by local media, they admitted that they had dyed two Chow Chows.
After being contacted by local media, the Qinhu Bay Forest Animal Kingdom confessed and said: “It was a native Chow Chow dyed into a ‘tiger dog’, not a tiger.”
They also claimed that dying the dogs had just been “a gimmick”, although they said that all the dogs had been dyed professionally and there was no risk to their health.