Zoo Admits its Pandas are Just Dogs Dyed to Look Like Them [Video]

It was all discovered after one of the pandas started barking. Yes, barking.

Giant, fluffy, goofy panda bears make us all say awwww and smile. I'm sure if you're on Instagram you've seen the myriad of panda videos that pop up showing their silliness, klutziness, and cuteness, especially because that's about as close as most of us will ever get to seeing them.

These cuddly animals are rare in the United States. At this moment, Zoo Atlanta is the only place in America that has giant pandas on loan from China. In the past San Diego, Memphis, and Washington, D.C. zoos have had them.

So were they even real?  Absolutely they were as these are major zoos we're talking about that are part of an international program called Panda Diplomacy.

According to Reuters, this is a program that's been around for decades where China loans giant pandas to zoos around the world as a tool of diplomacy and wildlife conservation.

However, zoogoers at the Shanwei Zoo in China in the coastal province of Guangdong bordering Hong Kong and Macau apparently decided they were going to paint giant, fluffy dogs to look like pandas because people love panda bears.

According to the New York Post, Zoogoers were outraged after discovering they were totally duped over the so-called “pandas” that were so much fun to visit and fawn over.

Zoo officials initially tried to sell the sham as a special kind of giant panda breed called "panda dogs" however that didn't fly. According to the New York Post, the Shanwei Zoo admitted the two "pandas" were a popular breed of Spitz called a Chow Chow.

Apparently this isn't the first time a zoo in China has done this as you can see from this next video.

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