The Tainan fake panda incident refers to an incident at a private zoo in

Tainan Tainan (), officially Tainan City, is a special municipality in southern Taiwan facing the Taiwan Strait on its western coast. Tainan is the oldest city on the island and also commonly known as the "Capital City" for its over 200 years of his ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

, where a

sun bear The sun bear (''Helarctos malayanus'') is a species in the family Ursidae (the only species in the genus ''Helarctos'') occurring in the tropical forests of Southeast Asia. It is the smallest bear, standing nearly at the shoulder and weighing ...

was painted black and white and falsely presented to visitors as a giant panda. The bear was first unveiled on 24 December 1987, and quickly drew scepticism as experts were not in power, suspecting fraud. By 3 January 1988, officials from the Council of Agriculture, and zoology experts from

National Taiwan University National Taiwan University (NTU; ) is a public research university in Taipei, Taiwan. The university was founded in 1928 during Japanese rule as the seventh of the Imperial Universities. It was named Taihoku Imperial University and served d ...

and

Normal University A normal school or normal college is an institution created to train teachers by educating them in the norms of pedagogy and curriculum. In the 19th century in the United States, instruction in normal schools was at the high school level, turni ...

determined the animal was not a true panda. This incident made popular the use of the term "(giant) cat bear" '(dà)māoxióng'', (大)貓熊instead of "(giant) bear cat" '(dà)xióngmāo'', (大)熊貓to refer to pandas in Taiwan.

References

Fraud Zoos in Taiwan 1987 in Taiwan 1988 in Taiwan {{Taiwan-hist-stub