No Zebra? Paint Your Ass
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 10th, 2009
Two white donkeys dyed with black stripes, above, delight Palestinian children, who have never seen a zebra for real, at a small Gaza zoo. Photo by Mohammed Salem
With their long ears, drooping heads and sleepy eyes, the impostors would probably not fool the zoo’s only lioness. But the effect achieved by the zoo owners’ dye job looks not so bad — to the unpractised eye, and from a distance.
The donkey or ass, Equus africanus asinus, is a domesticated member of the Equidae or horse family, and an odd-toed ungulate. The wild ancestor of the donkey is the African Wild Ass, E. africanus.
Zebras (above) are African equids best known for their distinctive white and black stripes, of three species, the Plains Zebra (Equus quagga), Grevy’s Zebra (Equus grevyi) and the Mountain Zebra (Equus zebra).
On closer inspection the fur of the Gaza “zebras” resembles the classic convict suit of cartoon strips. Nidal Barghouti, whose father owns the Marah Land zoo, said that the two female donkeys were striped using masking tape and women’s hair dye, applied with a brush.
“The first time we used paint but it didn’t look good,” he said. “The children don’t know so they call them zebras and they are happy to see something new.”
A genuine zebra would have been too expensive to bring into Gaza via tunnels under the border with Egypt, said Muhammad Barghouti, the owner. “It would have cost me $40,000 to get a real one.”
Beside, he said, “It is difficult to smuggle zebras, because it’s not an official trade.”
Barghouti’s zoo charges a small entrance fee for a busload of children. Hasan Yaseen, a visitor, said that since his three children had never seen a real zebra, they enjoyed the Gaza version.
Apart from the two “zebras” and the lioness, the zoo also boasts an ageing tigress, two monkeys and a selection of birds, rabbits and cats. Barghouti swears that they are all real.
Sources: Times of London, BBC, AP, Reuters, etc.
++++
Join the great people at Sasqwatch who have donated! Please positively assist the move of the International Cryptozoology Museum, as it soon opens in downtown Portland, Maine. Please click on the button below (not the one up top) to take you to PayPal to send in your museum donation.
This post was written by
Loren Coleman no longer writes for Cryptomundo. His archived posts remain here at Cryptomundo.
I think this is fantastic. Good on him. A bit of harmless fun which is sure to bring much joy to many children. Great work!
It’s easy to laugh at the zookeeper until I realized that we painted our President to look like a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Let him without sin cast the first stone, I guess.
I wonder what they’re planning to do when the monkeys die…
All jokes aside, I hope that the situation in Gaza is corrected in the near future, so these children can have a happy childhood —which is IMHO the very foundation of a peaceful wold.
I would like to second what Youcantryreachingme said.
Plus:
I’m sorry, but your Post Title made me laugh a full three minutes!!! LOL!!!
Do they have an “elephant”?
I am willing to ship him fake antlers that he can glue on a dog, so that they have deer as well. As far as elephants I think he could staple some frizbees to a donkeys ears paint him grey, and glue a water hose to the donkeys nose, and that should work. You gotta know I am from the south.
I don’t mean to be a sore sport, but everyone is making jokes. I watched the video on this story on msn.com today and the reporter said the 2 zebras they had died of starvation. Not really very funny. IMHO they shouldn’t have any animals until they can be fed and cared for properly.