The April Fool Archive

Taiwanese April Fool's Day Hoaxes

Fake Panda Bear Scandal (2009)

The Taipei Times reported that pandemonium broke out at the Taipei Zoo when it was discovered that the zoo's two panda bears, received as a gift from China, were fakes. They were really "Wenzhou brown forest bears that had been dyed to create the panda's distinctive black-and-white appearance." The fraudulent pandas prompted comparisons to the recent contaminated milk scandal, in which milk watered-down with melamine had sickened 300,000 victims across China. More…