An Egyptian zoo appears to have painted black stripes on a donkey to try to pass it off as a zebra.
The animal at Cairo’s International Garden has long pointy ears and a small frame like a donkey.
It also has black stripes across its body but one of the stripes on its face appears to have been smudged.
The case of the ‘almost zebra’ came to light after Mahmoud Sarhan, an Egyptian student, posted photographs online after a visit to the zoo.
The pictures quickly went viral and animal experts rushed in to point out that the animal looked nothing like a zebra.
As well as the difference in size and ears, zebras have black snouts. The animal in the photograph has a grey snout.
There appeared to be at least two painted animals in the enclosure.
The zoo has denied that it painted a donkey and insists that the animal is real. The zoo opened earlier this year in a park to the east of downtown Cairo.
This is not the first time that zookeepers appear to have tried to pass off donkeys as zebras.
A zoo in Gaza painted two donkeys because it was too difficult to bring actual zebras past the Israeli and Egyptian blockade.
But the zoo owner made no secret of the paint job, saying he did it to try to show children what life was like beyond Gaza’s borders.