Read between the lines to expose fakes

“If the law supposes that,” said Mr Bumble (in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist), squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass—a idiot”. Clearly those who run a zoo in a municipal park in Cairo presume that not just the law but visitors are that too, not to mention zebras, give or take a few stripes. So they daubed a couple of locally bred donkeys with black stripes and tried to pass them off as zebras. Of course, the authorities deserve the benefit of doubt (or ignorance) as the creatures in their enclosures could well be zebroids, bred since the 19th century and even acknowledged by Charles Darwin. The zoo authorities can, therefore, brazen it out and insist these are actually zebra hybrids—zonkeys or zebkeys, or donkras or zebhinnies, depending on which parent had stripes. Except that their paint job was not very good and the stripes have smudged already.

Well, at least donkeys and zebras are closely related cousins of the equine family and could conceivably produce hybrids of varied stripes. But what about the zoo in China that tried to pass off an employee’s pet Tibetan Mastiff (genus canis) as an African lion (genus panthera) in 2013 and was exposed when the dog barked? Was that a more grievous case of crossing the line than Cairo’s zebkeys—or those who insist on naming their dogs Leo or Tiger?