Did Egyptian zoo paint donkeys to make them look like Zebras?
A zoo in Egypt has been accused of painting donkeys to make them look like zebras. The accusations came after a visitor to the zoo took a picture and shared it online of less-than-stellar looking zebra.
Mahmoud Sarhan posted the image on Facebook with the animal at Cairo’s International Garden municipal park.
In the post, he said that both animals within the enclosure at the zoo looked like fake zebras.
The zebra closely resemblance to a donkey, is smaller than a normal zebra and appears to have smudges on its face.
And judging from the pictures, online animal experts sided with Mahmoud, according to CBS News.
FAKE ZEBRAS
An expert vet also insisted that zebras have black snouts and their stripes are much more consistent and parallel than the ones shown in the image snapped by the 18-year-old student.
“The stripes (on a zebra) are always defined, never smudged, and zebras can be small but never that small,” Adams explained to the Independent.
“The ears are rounded, not oblong and pointy, and of course zebras have black skin, answering that age-old question of them being black with white stripes.”
The zoo director has however denied the claims, although he told a local radio station Nogoum FM that the animal was not fake, according to the BBC.
This is not the first time that a zoo has been accused of trying to fool its audience. In 2009, unable to find a way around the Israeli blockade, a zoo in Gaza painted two donkeys to look like zebras, while in 2013, a Chinese zoo tried to pass off a Tibetan mastiff dog as an African lion.