China zoo under fire for disguising dog as lion

[dnoblett]

Funny...

 

http://i949.photobucket.com/albums/ad334/dnoblett/Misc%20Junk%20for%20posting/photo_1376558276858-1-0_zps4ca1eb38.jpg

 

A Chinese zoo's supposed "African lion" was exposed as a fraud when the dog used as a substitute started barking.

 

The zoo in the People's Park of Luohe, in the central province of Henan, replaced exotic exhibits with common species, according to the state-run Beijing Youth Daily.

 

It quoted a customer surnamed Liu who wanted to show her son the different sounds animals made -- but he pointed out that the animal in the cage labelled "African lion" was barking.

 

http://i949.photobucket.com/albums/ad334/dnoblett/Misc%20Junk%20for%20posting/9e830eac-58a6-4307-b3c6-b614cd784db5_dog-lion1_zps229352ad.jpg

 

The beast was in fact a Tibetan mastiff -- a large and long-haired breed of dog.

 

"The zoo is absolutely cheating us," the paper quoted Liu, who was charged 15 yuan ($2.45) for the ticket, as saying. "They are trying to disguise the dogs as lions."

 

MORE...

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/china-zoo-under-fire-disguising-dog-lion-070130828.html

[Randy W]

A Tibetan mastif kennel near Xianggelila

 

 

 

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[Randy W]

.
Inside the kennel



. . . and from the National Geographic

What's a Tibetan Mastiff? Explaining Dog Posed as Lion

 

They are a large guardian breed traditionally bred in Tibet. They are considered to be the origin of most of the mastiff breeds: English mastiffs, bulldogs, Great Pyrenees, all of those.

. . .

There's no question that they go for ridiculous prices in China—[$60,000 to $100,000] for a top puppy. What the Chinese are breeding today is what they think the mastiff should be, not what the Tibetans would think. The Chinese have admitted to mixing in breeds—they're creating their own breed, basically.

How big do they typically get? Lion-size?

Everybody exaggerates their sizes. Females typically range between 70 and 110 pounds [32 and 50 kilograms], males range from 90 to 130 pounds [41 and 59 kilograms], and 130 is big. Even the biggest male is rarely more than 150 pounds [68 kilograms]. They're not a giant breed, [but] people think they're much bigger because they have a heavy coat and huge heads.

Are they a friendly breed?

I don't think friendly is the right word. The breed standard is that they're "aloof with strangers." They're not aggressive, but they are completely disinterested in people. You know a golden retriever will go up to anyone and wag their tail; not a Tibetan mastiff. They're very protective.

[Randy W]

Luxury puppy sells for 12 MILLION yuan in Zhejiang

 

The puppy has been called a "luxury pet," and the dog's breeder claims that it has "lion's blood." Tibetan mastiffs are status symbols for people with crap loads of money but no urge to be productive with it and, as Agence France-Presse reports, the whole thing is probably a scam anyways:

 

[Randy W]

. . . and now they're selling for as little as $5 a head for dinner

 

Once-Prized Tibetan Mastiffs Are Discarded as Fad Ends in China

But Tibetan mastiffs are so 2013.

Instead, earlier this year Nibble and 20 more unlucky mastiffs found themselves stuffed into metal chicken crates and packed onto a truck with 150 other dogs. If not for a band of Beijing animal rights activists who literally threw themselves in front of the truck, Nibble and the rest would have ended up at a slaughterhouse in northeast China where, at roughly $5 a head, they would have been rendered into hot pot ingredients, imitation leather and the lining for winter gloves.

China’s boom-to-bust luxury landscape is strewn with devalued commodities like black Audis, Omega watches, top-shelf sorghum liquor and high-rise apartments in third-tier cities. Some are the victims of a slowing economy, while others are casualties of an official austerity campaign that has made ostentatious consumption a red flag for anticorruption investigators.