When you pay to go to a zoo to see pandas and get to the panda enclosure, you expect to see…pandas! But that is not what happened in China in 2024. As this bizarre news clip explains, there were no pandas but dogs painted black and white. Read on to find out more about this mind-blowing deception!
Disappointment at the Panda Enclosure
An exhibit at the Taizhou Zoo in the Chinese province of Jiangsu that opened on May 1st, 2024, made headlines for all the wrong reasons. It was presumed by some visitors to contain giant pandas, a species endemic to China and popular in zoos. However, the enclosure actually contained two Chow Chow dogs. As you can see from the clip, these pooches were friendly to the visitors, but they were certainly not pandas.
They had fluffy bodies and round faces, and their fur was dyed black and white in a panda-like pattern. However, their wagging tails, canine teeth, and distinctly dog-like mannerisms made it obvious they were not pandas. It was the panting and barking that really gave it away! There are no real pandas at the zoo, and as of November 2025, the exhibit still features dyed Chow Chow dogs. The zoo was criticized by some for misleading visitors, though it maintained that it had advertised the animals as “panda dogs.”
Dyed Dog Fur
Chow Chows have fluffy, round faces like pandas.
©iStock.com/Ivan Marjanovic
The zoo hit back at claims of deception. In statements made to Chinese state media and reported at the time in this article from NBC News, they said, “they had clearly advertised them as ‘panda dogs’ and did not make any false claims.”
Other people expressed concern at the time that it was cruel to dye the dogs. The video clip, which was originally posted on TikTok, shows the dogs eagerly approaching visitors and receiving treats through the bars of their enclosure.
There have been previous reports in China of Chow Chows being dyed to look like pandas. The Cute Pet Games cafe opened in 2019 in Chengdu, in the southwest Sichuan province, and had six fluffy Chow Chows dyed white and black. According to media reports at the time, the cafe even offered a dyeing service so customers could give their own pets a similar makeover!
