A zoo in China has gone to the dogs.

A zoo in the city of Louhe has been busted for claiming a dog is actually a lion. As it turns out, the “lion” is really a Tibetan mastiff. The roar from cheated visitors began recently when a woman was looking at the animal with her son and noticed the animal actually let out a bark.

It seems the zoo, which claims it wasn’t trying to fool anyone, has some real issues identifying animals properly – a dog was placed in a wolf cage and a fox was kept in the spot where leopards stay.

The zoo claims the Tibetan mastiff had been placed in the lion’s cage because of “safety concerns,” although it’s unclear what those are. The dog was with the wolves in the hopes of siring some kind of wolf-dog in an apparent ‘Island of Dr. Moreau’-type experiment.

Regardless of the zoo’s reasons, the incident has caused an uproar (pun intended) on social media, with people blasting the facility.

The zoo closed in order to fix the snafus and issues an apology to the public in a local newspaper.

[CNN]

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