Politicians went mad over zoo tiger walking on water
Tigers actually enjoy water and their access to an indoor shelter was reportedly not restricted.
Footage of a zoo tiger named Sleepy Babe (睏寶) wandering over a muddy land covered in water at Hsinchu Zoo was circulating on the internet and sparked heated conversation, according to UDN News, a major pro-China media outlet in Taiwan.
The grass area that Sleepy Babe is prisoned in is usually dry, but heavy rain caused by the surrounding weather system of a typhoon made the land a small pond, the news outlet said.
BobaChair is against most zoo practices so we use the term "prisoned" as a technically accurate term for their status. And no, we don't have an editorial ethics policy to show here you coz we have no quids like 'em fancy outlets.
"Heavy rain exposed the real ability of the Kao Hung-an government" said yanglingyi2022 on Threads — a DPP councilor of Hsinchu criticized the once TPP mayor of Hsinchu, who cited the footage "heartbreaking".
shihkai_lin, a DPP candidate for Hsinchu councilor, announced on Threads that they had reported this incident to animal protection authorities.
UDN News pointed out via Hsinchu Zoo's statement that tigers actually enjoy water and their access to an indoor shelter was not restricted.
On June 26th, the day the tiger footage was revealed on the internet, the once TPP mayor Kao Hung-an announced a city-wide school and work break from the noon due to heavy rains in Hsinchu City, the home to the top chip manufacturing firm TSMC, causing traffic jams on roads, according to LTN, a pro-Independence Taiwanese news outlet.
Kao and the TPP founder Ko Wen-je (who formed the TPP during their Taipei mayor years in hope to pursue presidency) are the only mayors TPP had in Taiwan history. Kao left TPP after they were convicted for corruption, and Ko resigned as the TPP chair after being charged for bribery. Kao was restored as mayor after they were found not guilty of corruption in December 2025, and remained highly associated with TPP. We could not find Kao's statement about the tiger.
TPP is the third largest political party in Taiwan, using a vague China policy to form an informal alliance with KMT, the majority party of the parliament that is in an existential crisis over whether it's pro-Communist-China or pro-ROC, while the pro-ROC/Taiwan party DPP controls the presidency and is the second largest party in the parliament.
Due to DPP's incompetence in local elections, it controls only 1 in 3 major public zoos in Taiwan as of mid 2026 — Taipei under KMT, Hsinchu under a TPP-leaning mayor, Kaohsiung under DPP. This flips the underdog script: TPP, usually the party criticized by no one because it holds no real power nationally, suddenly finds itself the target — while DPP, the actual ruling party, gets to play opposition over a zoo it doesn't even run. Sleepy Babe, meanwhile, is probably just napping on the muddy land.
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