A image of a strange, dog-like creature standing on two legs began circulating on the internet around a week ago.
An autonomous trail camera aimed at the perimeter fence of the Amarillo Zoo captured the image at night.
The odd bipedal creature was seen roaming about outside the zoo, prompting speculation on social media about what it was.
Now, local officials are appealing to the public for assistance in solving the mystery.
‘Is it a person with a funny hat who likes to walk at night?’ inquired a tweet from the official City of Amarillo account. Is that a chupacabra? Do you know what this UAO-Unidentified Amarillo Object could be?’
In case you didn’t know, a chupacabra is a vampiric dog-like creature from American legend. They’re claimed to be the size of a small bear and prowl the countryside at night, preying on cattle and humans.
The original image was posted to Reddit by an anonymous user who said it came from a zookeeper’s Facebook group.
‘The keeper said that they caught the image on a trail camera pointed at a perimeter fence and couldn’t figure out what it was,’ the uploader, who uses the handle @Segu1n wrote in the thread.
‘I believe it was pointed from inside the zoo at the perimeter fence.’
Suggestions ranged from Fantastic Mr. Fox himself to one of the werewolves from the classic 2002 sci-fi horror film Dog Soldiers.
Another Redditor pitched in with a more creative suggestion: ‘That’s a small child with a dead coyote skull on their head. If you look closely you can see the spatula used to skin said animal in small child’s left hand.’
The user responsbile for the snap clarified that the zookeepers hadn’t seen anything like this before on any of their automated cameras.
‘The OP’s other posts go back at least a year and are all just normal animal keeper type posts,’ Segu1n wrote.
Looks like the city officials are on the case. Hopefully we’ll have a resolution to this mystery soon.