A zoo in central China has raised many eyebrows this week after it was caught seemingly trying to pass off a dog as a wolf.
The news has been the talk of the town after social media footage appeared last Tuesday, 2 March, showing a visitor to the Xiangwushan Zoo in Xianning, visiting the zoo’s wolf enclosure, as reported by BBC News.
The visitor filmed an animal that looked like a Rottweiler lying on its side in a cage and said to the animal: “Woof! Are you a wolf?” in a short video.
The video has since gone viral which led netizens to joke online in regards to the matter. However, the incident also sparked a debate about whether zoos were still necessary in a post-Covid era, as many are voicing their concerns about their maintenance.
So, is it a dog or a wolf?
As it turns out, the animal in the video was indeed a doggo! As reported by BBC News, Mr Xu, the person who filmed the footage, told Beijing News that he had questioned a zoo staff at the park, asking if there was a dog in the wolf’s cage.
He was told that there had been a wolf, but that it had “died of old age”.
Later, an employee confirmed the matter and said that the dog, which had been raised as a watchdog by the park, was only being kept there temporarily. He also hinted that the zoo had been financially struggling by saying it “didn’t have enough visitors to keep the zoo up and running well”.
Netizens later took to social media to discuss the matter and suggested that the zoo should at least hire a ‘husky’. Some even joked by saying that they are just relieved that the dog was not the wolf’s dinner.
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