Scam in Japan passes off sheep as dogs

[altivo]

Dogs are status symbols in Japan. It is costly to own one, and usually only the wealthy can do so. In a way, it's surprising that a scam like this hasn't surfaced before. Apparently someone got the idea of passing off young sheep as "poodles" and hundreds of Japanese fell for it even though the price was suspiciously low.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21628274-662,00.html.

My first thought was that Japanese must be spectacularly ignorant not to be able to tell the difference between a sheep and a poodle. But after a little more reflection, I realized that it's quite likely that a great many Americans couldn't do much better.

EDIT: As of Friday morning, Snopes reports that the story is false even though many British and Australian newspapers picked it up and published it.

Comments

[thistledown.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if I believe this or not. I wasn't aware we Aussie's even DID live sheep export to Japan...especially not young lambs. And sending them individually would be terribly expensive..cheaper to send real poodles :) I'm afraid I'll put this one in my "Urban Myth" folder until I see more confirmation.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

If it's fake, a lot of newspapers have apparently fallen for it.

I don't think anyone in the US could be duped into taking a lamb for a puppy. Most people have never seen a sheep up close, but they have seen dogs. That's not true for most Japanese, who have never been close to either.

What I'd expect here would be someone selling llamas but pretending they are alpacas. A llama can be had for very little, but alpacas in the US are a sort of pyramid scheme with artificially high prices. Many would-be "investors" in the alpaca scheme wouldn't know the difference between a young llama and a young alpaca.

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

It almost sounds as if it should've been a Monty Python skit.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Only if done in Japanese.

[typographer.livejournal.com]

No, semaphore! It's side-splittingly funny in semaphore, trust me!

I've seen it happen

[tinbender.livejournal.com]

We used to have a few sheep. One night a pack of dogs got in and killed all but one. He had one of his hind legs damaged beyond use, but he recovered and spent the rest of his life on three legs with one of the back legs dangling. At that point, we let him run loose since he didn't really get into much and couldn't get far.

My Mom also ran a ceramic shop out of our basement. She had people that would drop by for classes or just to work on projects. We would put our dogs on the porch when people were coming. One day she saw an expected student pull in the driveway, so my Mom headed down stairs to wait for her (we had an outside entrance.) She waited for awhile and the student didn't come down, then she heard the car start up and pull out of the driveway, which was puzzling. A little later she got a phone call from the student. She wasn't going to come back until we "put locked up that big dog." My Mom replied that the dogs were locked up on the porch. "Not the big white one!" was the response. She was scared of the sheep we had running loose, thinking it was a dog.

[linnaeus.livejournal.com]

I'm not a veterinarian, but I'd think that the hooves would be a tip off.

Which is not to say that I couldn't see mistaking a Bedlington Terrier for a lamb from a distance, but yikes...

Re: I've seen it happen

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yup. That's the difference between city folks and country folks. We who live in the country know where an egg comes from. We eat it anyway, but a lot of city folks would be so horrified they'd never touch another.

I've seen something similar. One summer while I was in college I worked as a summer camp counselor. The kids and most of the counselors were from strictly urban or suburban environments. As a field trip one day we piled them all onto the buses and took them to the county fair.

I remember hearing a female counselor exclaim "Oh! Look at the funny dogs." And a rush of kids went to pet the "funny dogs." They were Nubian goats. Fortunately, most goats dote on attention and a good laugh was had by all, especially the goats' owner.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I find it believable. Snopes doesn't say it's a myth (yet.)

There are dogs in Japan, of course. But most of them live in rural areas, and most of them belong to Spitz type breeds, like the Shiba Inu, the Akita, and the Kai Dog. Poodles would be very exotic over there.

When you think of the vast variation in dog phenotypes... If you didn't know better, would you believe that a Pomeranian, a greyhound, and a St. Bernard were all the same species? I don't think I would. If you knew that such wide variation was possible, yet had only seen a few varieties of dog in your life, how could you be sure? So the dog's toenails are perhaps a bit overgrown?

Now, if the sheep had horns, then I'd expect some resistance. XD

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'll have to trust you, since I can't picture it. I know it could be made funny in morse code, but that's a selective audience indeed.

[octatonic.livejournal.com]

They pay many yen to play golf also.

*shivers*

Golf.

@.@

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I, uh... the mind boggles. Simply boggles.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

As you say heavy urban Japanese quite often don't know what wild animals look like. At least most Australians can tell animals....I think

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly sure most Aussies would recognize a sheep, a cow, and a horse, anyway. Those are as much a part of your culture as they are of ours.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Cultural issues. You and I couldn't tell apart a hundred different kinds of goldfish. ;D

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I think it was Winston Churchill who described golf as a "Perfect way to ruin a lovely walk." XD

[corelog.livejournal.com]

I would hope people wouldn't be that easily fooled...after all, sheep also have a very different diet than dogs...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm sure if it actually happened you'd realize pretty fast that something wasn't right. The interesting thing about it is, though apparently the story is a hoax or exaggeration, it actually originated in Japan according to Snopes. So the Japanese themselves were ready to believe it.