Bear with me

Hangzhou Zoo in China has been accused of dressing up humans in furry costumes and passing them off as sun bears. The zoo has denied this of course. The very idea of a Chinese state-run anything carrying out any sort of deception is as ludicrous as the very idea of a human pretending to be a bear. It turns out that the idea that humans were pretending to be bears was baloney.

- MICHELE HEWITSON

What a shame. It’s a brilliant idea, if not an entirely original one. A zoo in Egypt was rumbled for the innovative ploy of painting stripes on a donkey and calling it a zebra. Another one, in China, claimed that a Tibetan mastiff dog was a lion. The lion was exposed as a dog after a zoo visitor heard it barking. Barking is about right.

I can’t think why anyone objected. Or was surprised. Asia is where you go to buy knock-offs. In Thailand, I was once told by a persistent purveyor of patently fake Prada bags they were “same, same. But different”.