Staff Members Pretend To Be Giant Pandas At This Japanese Zoo

A zoo in Japan has caught social media's attention after the staff members were found dressing up and mimicking pandas. The unusual activity at the Adventure World amusement park in Shirahama Town, Wakayama prefecture, is being seen as an attempt to keep alive the memories of the four pandas that have now been returned to China.

In June last year, 24-year-old Rauhin and her children, Yuihin, Saihin and Fuhin, returned to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China's Sichuan province. Adventure World began a breeding cooperation program with the Chinese panda research base in 1994. In the subsequent three decades, 17 giant pandas were born in the Wakayama park.

Though it remains unlikely when the pandas will return owing to the diplomatic tensions between the two countries, the park has kept its facilities for the bears in place and still holds panda-related events.

A panda keeper experience tour is held at the park's panda facilities every week, where people dress up as panda keepers to feed one of the four pandas that zoo members take turns to mimic.

"In a viral video clip, the staff member wears a panda hat and pretends to eat an apple given to him by a participant. They are also allowed to go inside the pandas' living areas, which opened to the public after the bears left," a report in South China Morning Post highlighted.

Currently, only two giant pandas remain in Japan. Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei, a pair of twin pandas at Tokyo's Ueno Zoological Gardens, are scheduled to return to China by the end of January.

Watch: Foreigner Confronts Indian Man For Littering In Meghalaya Village Known For Cleanliness

Zoos Imitating Animals

This is not the first instance when a zoo has attempted to mimic other animals. Last year, a Chinese zoo came under scrutiny after admitting to painting donkeys black and white to look like zebras in a bid to increase tourist footfall. The Zibo City amusement park in Shandong province confirmed that dye was indeed used on the animals, but insisted it was not toxic.

Before that, another zoo located in Taizhou in the Jiangsu province promoted itself on social media by colouring two dogs black and orange to resemble tigers.

"Our tigers are huge and very fierce!" the zoo claimed during a live on the ByteDance-owned app Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.

After the video went viral, social media users pointed out that the creatures enclosed in wooden pens on the screen were not tigers, but two Chow Chow dogs who were painted bright orange with black stripes