Zoo paints donkey with stripes to look like zebra— and visitors aren’t wild about it

Their zebra costume is half-assed!

A Chinese zoo tried to pass a donkey off as a zebra by painting it with stripes — unleashing a flood of mockery online over the wild switcheroo.

Footage shows the donkey marked with crudely drawn black stripes at the wildlife park in Anqiu, Weifang, where observers easily exposed the animal-world impostor. 

The animal’s long ears and coloring, along with other donkeys in its enclosure, tipped off visitors at the Qingyun Mountain Folk Custom Amusement Park, according to Jam Press.

The laughably obvious zebra deception sparked outrage on Chinese social media — but staffers insisted the situation isn’t simply black and white.

“We’re doing cosplay. We never said it was a zebra!” one staffer reportedly wrote online. “We didn’t even put up a sign saying it was a zebra! It’s just a joke, an abstract kind of thing meant to entertain visitors.”

Staffers also claimed they had carried out similar “makeovers” on dogs in a bid to make visitors laugh.

The Zibo City amusement park in Shandong also admitted last year to passing a donkey off as a zebra after it came under fire online.

A different animal park in China, Taizhou Zoo, also appalled visitors last year when it allegedly dyed two dogs black and orange to look like tigers.

Critics accused the zoo of animal cruelty at the time, prompting a rep to fire back, “People also dye their hair … Natural dye can be used on dogs if they have long fur.”

In 2024, zoogoers at  Shanwei zoo were also outraged when they discovered so-called “pandas” were actually just painted dogs.