Chinese Nationalist Nitwits Punked By April Fool’s Gag

First heard about this on Michael Turton's site. Saturday's Taipei Times tells the story:

The hoax article titled “Pandemonium breaks out at Taipei Zoo” said that Tuan Tuan (團團) and Yuan Yuan (圓圓), the two pandas that arrived in December as gifts from China, were discovered to be Wenzhou brown forest bears dyed black and white after zoo workers noticed unusual sexual behavior.

The next day, Taiwan's China Post had more details:

[Taipei] Zoo spokesman Jason King said the zoo was flooded with phone calls from as far afield as Britain, Japan and Canada, whose callers asked if the pandas were forest bears in disguise.

O-kaaay. Here's one big clue in the original story all those geniuses seemed to miss:

The Taipei Zoo’s . . . Connie Liu (劉長春), said she 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.

. . . “They would do it doggy-style and every armchair zoologist knows that pandas favor the missionary position — when they do it at all. Their behavior caused chaos. Children screamed and parents became irate.” [emphasis added]

Now, the thing to remember is that newspapers are generally a bit Victorian in their use of language. No serious article will ever, EVER contain the expression, "doggy-style."

(The part about pandas favoring the missionary position should have been a dead-giveaway, too. Jeez, when I was 10 or 12 years old I knew that human beings were almost unique in the animal kingdom in their usage of the missionary position. * )

Speaking of that . . .

Taipei Zoo director Jason Yeh (葉傑生) did not see the funny side either and expressed concern about the prank’s negative impact on panda conservation education.

“The story carried incorrect information on panda behavior and could mislead the public,” he said. “The Taipei Zoo made a lot of effort to get the pandas at the zoo and we don’t want to see our efforts being destroyed.”

Golly, Mr. Yeh, maybe the truth is that your zoo just hasn't been doing a very good job in the education department. What have YOU been doing to inform zoo-goers that pandas prefer the, ah, ventro-dorsal position?

Glad to see the Taipei Times isn't apologizing to the likes of Jason Yeh and the Chinese Communist Party's paid mob of professional complainers. Folks've got a bad case of humor-deficit disorder if they can't laugh at lines like this:

“Whenever the moaning from the panda enclosure gets too loud we gotta go in there and hose ’em down with cold water,” [a zookeeper] said.

* A quick google shows that a few other animals DO use the missionary (ventro-ventral) position. Mostly whales, it looks like — and on rare occassions, chimps and gorillas.

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