YeinJee's Asian Journal

Taipei Zoo is not happy with an April Fools’ Day prank claiming that the two giant pandas in the zoo were disguised brown forest bears.

The Taipei Times ran an article on April 1st that the two pandas (a gift from the Chinese government) which arrived last December were actually “brown forest bears that had been dyed to create the panda’s distinctive black-and-white appearance.”

It’s said that a zoologist “became suspicious when the pandas began to spend almost all of their waking hours having sex. Pandas are notorious for their low libidos, which make them difficult to breed in captivity…”

The (real) zoo officials think that the prank was not funny at all, as the zoo was flooded with phone calls from as far as Japan, UK and Canada to ask about the matter. The zoo has sent in letters to ask the news portal to clear up the matter.

I’m surprised that people were fooled by the prank; isn’t the sex story a blatantly obvious joke? Well, obviously not obvious enough for some.